


THE BADLANDERS

by vanhunks



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Rape/Non-con Elements, graphic depictions of rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-16 01:16:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 29
Words: 61,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8081032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanhunks/pseuds/vanhunks
Summary: Warning: This story contains scenes of consensual and non-consensual explicit sexual content and language between adults and other non-consenting individuals, scenes of rape, incest, etc. Please be advised that if you do not like stories of this nature, that you don't read. If you wish to read this story, you must be 18 [eighteen] and older.**Novel set exclusively in the Alpha Quadrant and specifically in the Badlands in which Chakotay is painted very, very dark and quite evil. His nemesis is an equally evil Admiral Owen Paris. On the Liberty they engage in deviant orgies amongst other things and engage in slave trading. When Voyager is destroyed in the plasma turbulences of the Badlands, only ten crew survive, among them Kathryn Janeway, captain of Voyager. They become Chakotay's prisoners being prepared for slave trading on worlds inside the Badlands.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> INTRODUCTION
> 
> 1\. This story was written over a period of a month between March and April 2005 and posted a chapter per day on the Voyagerangel Message  
> Board. It started as a challenge to write some J/C/T smut scenes. I realised very quickly that it wouldn't be just a PWP smut piece, but  
> developed into a full length novella with plot and character development.
> 
> 2\. The story is a very, very dark A/U fic set almost exclusively in the Badlands, hence the title. 
> 
> 3\. Readers must be advised that there are many scenes of very explicit consensual and non-consensual sex and crudity of language. If you're  
> squeamish reading very erotic, explicit group, slash and het sex, rather not continue. 
> 
> 4\. The pairings explored in this story are amongst others C/T, J/C/T, J/C, C/f/f, P/K, P/K/T, Owen Paris/Gretchen Janeway [implied], Owen  
> Paris/Tom Paris [implied]. The main pairing is J/C and the story will conclude with this pairing.
> 
> 5\. I have created heroes and villains for this story, but be aware that the characters' dark sides are explored extensively and as someone said in  
> her assessment of the story, "you rocked our sweet & simple Voyager boat with this dark A/U story."
> 
> 6\. I have written few deep angst pieces, the kind where a character either dies, or is sexually assaulted or weird things happen to the character,  
> but "The Badlanders" is my first real attempt at very dark A/U, where the characters' actions are questioned at every turn [hopefully!] by the  
> reader. 
> 
> 7\. While writing this novella, my own world was dark for a month. 
> 
> 8\. While there are so much raw non-consensual situations, there is definitely a story!
> 
> 9\. Naturally, I hope that readers who like dark fics will like "The Badlanders"!

* * *

"You captured a starship captain, Chakotay?" Torres asked.

"Yeah."

"Who is it? Who?"

"Keep your eye on the engines, Torres! They might explode in your face, and we wouldn't want the Liberty to blow her engines now, would you?"

"You're not answering my question."

Like lightning Chakotay turned on her. She struggled to remain neutral to his appearance. He looked rugged, the  muscles straining against the leather jacket he wore, the dark trousers that did little to conceal his magnificent crotch, the leather belt that sometimes when she became intractable, lashed unceremoniously against her butt. He stood hands on his hips and stared her down.

"Who is the head of the Liberty again?" he barked.

Chakotay got that scowl on his face again. The way he squared his shoulders, the way his eyes fixed on her, expecting her to challenge him, the way those same eyes glowed with heat just behind the dark pupils...  Torres had an idea that they caught a very big fish this time. She shrugged, expelled a sigh. Chakotay was the boss, at any time, at all times.

"You are, Chakotay."

"That's good, Torres. _Never_ challenge my authority."

"But Chak - "

The next moment her eyes bulged and her face swelled. His fingers clamped tightly round her throat and he squeezed the breath out of her. It was always best not to struggle. Once before she'd become unconscious because she fought him and he had simply waited until she fell to the floor in a heap. When he let up only a little, she choked and coughed.

"What did I say?" he hissed.

"You are the leader."

"Don't...let me remind you again. Get that?" he rasped, the heat in his eyes exploding into a ball of fire so that the dark pupils glowed dangerously.

His fingers released their grip and for a moment her head swam so dizzy she was. Chakotay wouldn't kill her, that she knew, but he could come very close to it, every time. Rubbing her neck with one hand, fingers of the other hand on the console in front of her, she kept her attention on the Liberty's decrepit engines.

Chakotay wasn't going to tell her a thing until he was ready and she was burning with curiosity. She knew better than to enrage him again. He was their leader and he kept them safe here in the Badlands. This was the way he operated every time they captured a Federations. Chakotay would deliberate silently for hours thinking out ways best to punish the hapless Starfleet officers. Some died from their wounds and privation, others died trying to escape and still others simply caved in and did his bidding. That was what they liked best. Complete obedience from their captives. Those who submitted stayed on the Liberty and other Maquis ships; others were traded on homeworlds on the other side of the Badlands where their owners treated them well...

This time, it was a sleek little ship Paris would have given his eye teeth to fly. Voyager followed them into their lair and paid the price. Out to capture one Maquis, the intrepid ship got upended by Chakotay.

She smiled to herself. No Federation ship ever made it through the Badlands. Voyager came the closest. All they had to do was shoot into the plasma turbulences and it cooked up a royal storm that disabled Voyager's critical systems while the Liberty and the Limpet, Tom's pet shuttle peppered the hapless ship. It exploded into a shower of debris, but not before Chakotay transported a few of them off the ship. Now, they got ten of one hundred and forty survivors on the Liberty, and the captain was one of them.

Torres's eyes heat up with anticipation. If the captain it was a male... They had ingenious ways of torturing male captives. She had one of those toys herself, tied to her bedpost in her quarters. Whenever she felt in the mood, she'd get Dickson up and he'd be in her mouth; she suck him off first until he screamed with pleasure. He'd quickly learned to hold his erection for long periods, keeping her satisfied until she was spent. He was putty in her hands but sometimes she liked him fighting her, keeping his loins heated and her pussy serviced and he complied like the good bitch he was. That was after Chakotay, Ayala, Bandera and Li Park had done him in first. It was their way to get the captive to comply. Now, he serves as her toy. Dickson, the Dick, she called him. Nowadays he worked himself impressively into a frenzy when she entered her cabin for fear she might bring in the rear. She smiled to herself again. A few times when he refused, the men came in to help. After they were through with him, he had to contend with her own voracious Klingon appetite.

The ten Voyager captives were in the small cargo bay. No one dared to touch them. Chakotay carried a Klingon d'k tagh he used to swift effect if any of the Maquis got to the prisoners first. That was the captain's privilege. And boy, Chakotay used those privileges.

Torres sighed. Chakotay had never fucked her. Sometimes she exploded with jealousy whenever he had a female captive. He'd make her watch the master at work as he got the wretched woman squirming within minutes. Most times he never bothered with niceties, the woman screaming as he violated her.

"I don't have time for niceties, Torres," he said one night after he practically forced himself into the poor ensign, so young and untrained. "This is as good a way as any to break her in so she can be well oiled when we trade her with the Gorayans."

She had little time to feel sorry for the prisoners. Sometimes Chakotay would just throw her down himself, rip off her pants and spread her legs. Her heart would race, her mouth drool with anticipation, waiting for him to fuck her. Then he'd look at her pussy for long minutes before sinking his teeth into its soft fleshy folds. She'd squirm under him, instantly and uncontrollaby dripping with her juice, spilling liberally into his mouth. He'd work her pussy, licking, sucking her, forcing his tongue as far into her slit as he can, press her swollen clit's folds away and with his dry fingers rub her clit until she cried out from pain and pleasure. Then suddenly the rubbing would stop and she'd cry out again hoarsely the second his lips laved the tender nub, gently licking her until the passion became unbearable and she would arch so high he had to press her down, chewing away at her orgasm. He'd remain like that after she collapse, his face in her pussy for several minutes before he would start up again, repeating the agonising pleasure of eating her vagina.

But he never fucked her. Not her pussy. Not her ass. Never her mouth.

She wanted him. Wanted him badly.

And Chakotay knew that. It's why he gave her Dickson the Dick so she could jerk off with him before he made her watch him work. That way she'd have her own passion dampened by having been fucked by Dickson all afternoon so she could participate without wanting to jump in in making his new toy obedient.

"Is it a female?" she ventured, unable to curb her curiosity.

"Her name is Janeway," he muttered after his heavy, brooding silence. "Kathryn Janeway."

***

 

END CHAPTER ONE


	2. Chapter 2

 

He had trouble sleeping. He had trouble keeping awake. He had trouble with trouble. Everything was too much and too little. His mind was a haze of sexual depravity and maintaining that appetite. Of dealing with Torres and Seska that they don't fight again. Of ship's engines about to give in - a decrepit bucket of spare parts, Federation signals that had to be masked with new Maquis codes, of medicines, supplies. Contending with in-fighting, out-fighting, cock-fighting, crew control, damage control, pussy control, pathetic prisoner control - all kept him occupied and pre-occupied so that his own descent into a bile-producing morass of debauchery where he no longer thought of himself as himself but a version of himself was infinitely more sought after than having a conscience.

Prisoners. Females. He fucked them then left them for the rest of the crew.

That's the way he operated. The last prisoner was a pretty young ensign, cocky at first until he struck her across the cheek as the first signal of her submission. The next had been to strip her in full view of Ayala, Paris, Torres, Seska, and Bendera. When she protested her outrage he walloped her pretty pink ass using his leather belt until she lost consciousness. When she  collapsed on the floor, he'd chased out the audience, with only Torres remaining. He'd lifted the girl on his bunk, spread her legs wide while she was still unconscious, then primed himself at her pussy entrance, nudging her folds away with the knob of his cock distended and ready. The girl was young, looked very untrained, but her sweet cunt lured him, its light dusting of curls on her mound just enough to incite him into a temporary blind state where he tried to close his mind to shut out old images. He smelled her cunt, let the muskiness, the sex draw into every nerve cell in his brain. It worked every time. He had been rock hard when he'd walloped her and he was itching to fuck. He'd given Torres a nod. She took the hypospray and with the ensign's face turned upwards to him, injected the girl. The moment the ensign's eyes sprang open, the shocked gasp that escaped her was one of pain as he rammed his cock straight up her dry little pussy. She screamed and almost fainted again but Torres was ready with the spray in case it happened. Poor little slut was shocked out of her wits. He held her down, hands cupping the very heavy and full, creamy breasts, his cock filling her narrow passage, straining and throbbing against her. He watched the girl's eyes in which shame flitted and danced a sweet fandango.

"So, you want to be cocky with me? Here, feel my cock up your virgin pussy, sweetheart."

He ignored her tears and screams as he moved first with hard strokes, his balls smacking against her until he could feel her pussy walls softening, lubricating him. He gave a little cry of triumph, saw the girl close her eyes and turn her head away. Then he pounded her as hard as he could, finally gripping her leather belt-stained buttocks and pulling her off the surface of the bed, grunting as he moved into her.

"Look at me, bitch," he ordered, his body covered in a fine film of perspiration, his tanned skin glistening against her lily white skin. Torres turned the girl's head and held it so that she had to look into his face. He almost laughed the way her face changed from red anger, to shock, then shamed wonder and finally a surprised scream as she climaxed.

That was a week ago. When he shot his cum into her, grunting heavily, he had lain on top of her, breathing, breathing until he calmed again. The girl lay still, his cock still embedded into her tightness.

"Let me go now...please..."

Then he repeatedly fucked her, once flipping her over on her stomach, with Torres pressing her lower back to arch downward and her pussy was glaringly displayed for him. He grabbed her blonde hair with one hand, with the other keeping her thigh lifted and in a single swift entry, made her buck for almost half an hour until he was spent.

"Now, what is your name, little one?" he whispered against her ear as he lifted her hair away from her ravaged face.

"Megan," she whimpered. "Megan Delaney..."

Only then he called in Ayala and Dalby to take her away.

"Don't touch her. She's mine for this week," he ordered.

Last night he decided Torres would be good in bed after all. She wanted him and so far he had only given her enough to frustrate her into begging for more. But Torres was something else. He didn't really want to fuck her but the woman was a bitch in heat. The Klingon hybrid almost jumped out of her skin with delight. She was actually happy. He thought no one should be happy and that included whomever he chose to fuck at night or any other time during the day. He slept alone. Torres and the rest of his crew knew that. His rules. His orders. After a heavy session in which he had the girl screaming with pain or pleasure, he kicked her out of bed and chased her off where, caught either by Paris or Dalby or Ayala, she would spend the night in one of their beds.

He had no time for niceties. Once upon a time he had been nice - a  good, clean, happy and innocent nice man. Once upon a time he believed, mistakenly, that the world rewarded you for being good and trusting. Once upon a time he believed that compassion meant feeling the same, not sorry, but what engendered a feeling of forgiveness. Once upon a time he was a goddam fool for believing in the world.

But no more. Here in the Badlands he lived by his own rules, the code he wrote himself. Everyone who joined his cell or other cells in the Maquis and decided to make the Badlands their home, lived by his code. If they didn't like it, he beat them into submission or banned them from his group. A good trade-off. He kept them safe from the Federationists and Cardassians and they toed the line, however distorted his line was.

His rules. Follow orders or ship out.

The Starfleet people they caught were integrated into his cell or sold off to homeworlds. He had no time for sentiment. They were in a place they'd never get out unless the Maquis brought them out. They were in a place from which they could never be rescued and those who tried to rescue the Federations or Cardassians were killed in the attempt and their vessels destroyed.

Chakotay gave a weary sigh. Last night for the first time he fucked Torres up her ass, her mouth, her pussy. Every goddam orifice including those she created squeezing her tits together, he prodded, sunk deep into her. The woman was voracious, he had to give her that. Her ridges incited him as he licked or scored them with his teeth. She too, didn't bother with too much decorum. Was there ever decorum in fucking? He thought not. Torres gave as much as he gave, yet he sensed how she held back, afraid to temper him, anxious not to go soft on him and turn fucking into something pretty.

"Fuck me now," she invited as she knelt before him, gripping his engorged cock and sinking her mouth into him. He had closed his eyes and simply let her suck him hard. He could feel the movement of her throat, pressed deeper into her, enjoying the way her teeth grazed his skin. Then suddenly, he grabbed her head and started pounding. Thinking she would pull away, he crowed when she gave him measure for measure. He could feel the build-up in her warm, moist depths where, almost, he felt like pissing.

Groaning, he shagged until he shot his load down her throat.

Torres had risen slowly to her feet, stood against him so that her tits pressed into his chest. Her eyes looked wild, like a predatory cat. Some of his cum was dripping from the side of her mouth and she didn't bother to wipe it away. Instead, her lips closed shut and only then she swallowed, the sound like a gulp of water going down.

"Spirits, Torres!" he exclaimed.

It was the longest he had let any woman lie in his bed. In the early hours of the morning, drunk and heavy with sleep, but awake and aware, he kicked her out.

"Go and fuck Dickson."

Now, Voyager.

He had ten prisoners. Some were badly injured. He ordered they be left alone until he arrived. It was now a day later.

One of the prisoners was Voyager's captain.

"Maybe I should fuck Torres again tonight," he muttered under his breath as he opened the doors to the cargo bay of the Liberty.

****

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read are once again warned of the explicit nature of certain sexual situations. Pleased be warned that if you are squeamish reading about a twisted Chakotay or other equally debauched practices, that you rather skip this story. Many of my readers have already read this novella on VAMB [VoyagerAngel Message Board] and the know what to expect as the story unfolds. 
> 
> Thank you
> 
> vanhunks

* * *

"Where are we?" Kathryn Janeway asked as she tried to lift herself, looking into the concerned eyes of Krell, the Ketarchan doctor of Voyager. Her head throbbed and her body was suffused with pain. How could she have survived? She had no idea how long she had been unconscious, no concept of time, no recognition of the familiar bulkheads of her ship.

"We're on the Liberty, under the command of Captain Chakotay," Krell replied as he cushioned her head on his lap.

Kathryn groaned once, tried to shift, crying out softly as shards of pain shot through her. Trying to lift herself from Krell was futile, so she slumped against him again, sagging with relief as the waves of agony subsided. At least her CMO survived with her. She tried to think of her crew, brave men and women who stood by her, who died for their cause, but her immediate and terrifying concern was Krell's reply.

Chakotay.

Captain Chakotay of the Liberty. They might as well be dead. How many Federation people had been lost in the Badlands, never to be seen again? Sighing, she held her fingers to her temple, not surprised to see that blood had dried on them. Giving another little moan, she touched her leg, felt the protruding bone, an action that elicited a cry from her. A picture of a renegade wild man flitted through the pain waves. A warrior who once had principles, honourable notions. A man of honour no more.

"C-Chakotay…" his name fell from her parched lips. 

"Aye, Captain. The man you've been sent to capture. I am concerned."

As was she. Too many stories filtered out of the Badlands and landed on the conference tables of the Federation.

"Voyager?"

She sensed instinctively that her ship was gone. All ship's systems failed once the turbulent plasma cloud enveloped them and the Liberty fired into the cloud. She hoped, knew it was in vain to hope, but her despair had already begun to settle in her heart. She knew Voyager was gone, but she needed a verbal corroboration somehow, to establish the dreadful reality.

"I am sorry, Captain Janeway. Please, do not move. Your injuries are severe. Yes, Voyager is gone."

"Survivors?" she asked, already knowing that perhaps they were the only ones who made it.

"Only ten of us. Captain Chakotay transported us seconds before Voyager exploded."

"Oh, God..."

She wanted to cry but she felt she would never be able to shed a tear. She was beyond tears now. Her crew was gone - men and women, officers, senior officers, most who had loved ones waiting for them at home. No one who knew they were dead. If they didn't return, no one would come looking for them. Voyager was the only vessel designed and built specifically to maneuver through the Badlands. They had a brilliant pilot, one she had sprung from the Federation Penal Colony. Nick Locarno was their best, but he was the Federation bad boy, second only to... She sighed. They were in Hell. The Badlands was Hell in the universe. Not only did its cosmic properties make it impossible for ships of any major class to maneuver through its continuous plasma storms and asteroid fields, but it was home to the Maquis.

They'd heard stories from former disgruntled Maquis who made it out of the Badlands. The torture, slave trade, abuse, rapes. Every known unspeakable atrocity committed with no regard for dignity of the individuals they captured. At the vanguard of these atrocities stood one man the Federation despised for his reprehensible acts.

Chakotay.

Now they were his prisoners.

She tried to lift her head to look around her in the cargo bay. It was small, badly lit, but she could see the outlines of the others, either sitting or slumped against the bulkheads. One or two were moaning and she guessed they were injured too.

"Who - ?"

"Jenny Delaney, Captain. Ensign Harry Kim, Lieutenant Tuvok - "

"Commander Cavit?"

"I am sorry, Captain. He died. We are being denied medical treatment. Trying to set your leg here will be too stressful for you. You are in pain."

She nodded. She just touched her leg and it exploded into hellish fire. She tried to keep still this time. She had a raging thirst. Leaving them unattended was part of the ritual of torture. It couldn't be otherwise. They were denied medical treatment, food, water. Basic demands of prisoners of war. Basic demands and basic rights. She didn't think Chakotay concerned himself with their welfare.

"Has no one been here yet?" she asked him, able to lift her head fully now and sitting up against the large crate.

"No one, Captain. Captain, you know that they - "

She sighed. She knew. Everyone knew. Poor Megan Delaney had gone missing two weeks ago when the roundabout carrying ten crew was swallowed by the plasma storms on the perimeter of the notorious Hell's Passage. It was Voyager's mission to collect survivors of that disaster too. Their main aim though, was to capture Chakotay. The Federation argued if they could get him, much of the atrocities would come to a halt. He was a forceful, powerful leader and according to the disgruntled Maquis, extremely unpredictable and eccentric.

Again she emitted another long sigh. Many Starfleet officers had been subjugated, tortured, raped, then sold into slavery on home worlds on the inner perimeter of the Badlands.

It would have been no great task rescuing them from those alien worlds, but the two sectors in which those star systems were situated were protected by the cloud of plasma turbulences that formed a circle around them. It was impossible to enter the Badlands successfully from any point along its outer perimeter. Voyager tried, gambled and lost. The core was protected.

Chakotay, as the primary megalomaniac leader, protected his people.

He was the key and they had to neutralise the key element. In the meantime, there was little they could do to alleviate the plight of their people and of the Cardassians who were also the arch enemy of the Maquis.

She conceded the Federation didn't have very honourable intentions at best, but they didn't reckon with a warrior named Chakotay.

She remembered Owen Paris's words the day before she left for Deep Space Nine.

"Now, Kathryn, Chakotay will never succumb willingly. But we are trusting that you will have some influence on him. You do understand that, don't you?"

Piercing blue eyes remained locked with hers. She knew what he meant. She never wanted the mission. Never. Not to bring Chakotay back. Owen Paris had an agenda, one that included his lost son. If she brought Chakotay back, Tom Paris would return too.

"I see," she said, unable to keep the iciness from her voice. She never liked Owen Paris. The way his eyes roamed over her every time she was in his company had made her uneasy since her student days. What manner of men headed the Federation? Were they any different from Chakotay who, according to 'legend', never pretended?

She was of the few who knew why Tom left home, skipped his final Academy year, knocked two teeth out of his father's mouth and vowed that the next time he came up against Owen Paris, he wouldn't think twice driving a dagger through his heart. Once she had heard them argue, and Tom's words remained with her to this day:

"The boy couldn't fight back, Dad, but the man can. Don't push me."

After which Tom vanished and months later stories filtered through the Badlands and landed on the Federation conference tables that he had joined in an unholy alliance with Chakotay.

They heard footsteps outside the cargo bay and her heart hammered wildly and her head started spinning. She shouldn't be afraid, but she was. Krell held on to her as they braced themselves for the doors to open.

The doors opened and for the first time light streamed into the cargo bay. They moved closer together, seeking mutual comfort.

The first man who walked in was Chakotay. He was instantly recognisable. Wearing leather, and knee high boots, a leather belt round his waist and a d'k tagh displayed prominently against his left side, he looked imposing.

It was hard to think of him as a tyrant in those moments.

She had to remember that this was the most hated man in the Federation. She had to remember that she should hate him.

"Who is Kathryn Janeway?"

They were three women in command red. Had her rank pips fallen off? She hadn't noticed.

"Get up, Kathryn," he ordered as he looked from one woman to the other. Kathryn frowned heavily as she tried to rise to her feet, her fractured leg unable to sustain her weight on it. Another man grabbed her and held her up. He gripped her chin, tilted it so she had to look up and almost shoved her agaisnt Chakotay.

She gazed at his rugged, familiar face, the tattoo, at the eyes in which there was no recognition of her.

"Chakotay... I am Kathryn..."

***** 

 TBC


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read are once again warned of the explicit nature of certain sexual situations. Pleased be warned that if you are squeamish reading about a twisted Chakotay or other equally debauched practices, that you rather skip this story. Many of my readers have already read this novella on VAMB [VoyagerAngel Message Board] and the know what to expect as the story unfolds.
> 
> Thank you
> 
> vanhunks

* * *

Chakotay stared dispassionately at the heap on the floor. The woman had collapsed the second after she spoke his name. She seemed to know him, but that was nothing new to him. Every damned Federationist seemed to know him or wanted a piece of him. Mainly, he thought with an audible snort, they wanted a piece of him, and mostly likely all of him. Presented to the Federation as a corpse or his head dressed with an apple in his mouth handed to them on a platter.

He knew they wanted him dead. Not alive. Dead. Any proof of his demise was the physical evidence of a body. Janeway was like all of them. She had come to put his head on a platter. What the hell was he supposed to remember?

Remember that he had once been a Federationist himself? Remember that she was sent to lure him out and kill him? She had, like every vessel Starfleet sent in, badly underestimated him and the Badlands and now she was the captive. Like every female who was brought on the Liberty, she was going to come through his hands too. His hands and his mouth and his belt and his cock that already, even as he looked at the injured, prone figure on the floor, was hurrying into an arousal. He felt the itch; it started somewhere near his navel, crawled down towards his crotch, just above his cock, exciting his hairs into a cilia-like motion until his cock started to throb with need.

But the woman was unconscious and severely injured. They had no doctor in the Maquis, just poorly trained field medics with little or no experience. Most of the injured died of their wounds and it infuriated him since they were revenue for the Maquis. He noticed a Vulcan amongst the prisoners. Seska could work him over. Seska liked Vulcans.

"You," he hissed as he pointed to the officer who had been supporting the captain, "who are you? Do you have medical training?"

The man looked Ketarchan, and dressed in Starfleet teal. Science or medicine. He hoped it was the latter. Before the officer could reply, Chakotay's eyes went again to one of the women, narrowing as he took in her blonde appearance. She looked... His eyebrow lifted. She was a  clone of Megan Delaney who begged him to fuck him after only a day in his bed. That woman had been a virginal revelation. This one looked the same. Cocky. He turned to Ayala and Torres.

"Have her brought to my cabin now," he barked at them. Then he gripped Ayala's arm in a vice, "Touch her before I get there and you're dead." The girl gave a cry as Torres and Ayala moved swiftly forward and removed her from the group, dragging her out of the cargo bay. He grinned inwardly. Before he was going to work on Kathryn Janeway, the Delaney clone was going to give him pleasure. His erection bulged unceremoniously, arrogantly, for the moment turning its allegiance from Janeway to the blonde clone.

"Now, you," he said as he turned to the Ketarchan, "do you have medical training? Get up when I talk to you," he hissed. He kicked the Ketarchan in the mid-section when the man bent down to tend to his injured captain. The Ketarchan groaned from the impact of his boot, the unexpected force of the blow robbing him of breath. He paled, the ridges on his nose and forehead turning dark green, the green eyes filling with anger. He had to give it to the Ketarchan. The man thought better than to retaliate. Janeway must have had a loyal crew. This man was loyal to Janeway.

"I am Krell," he said heavily. "I am - was...Voyager's chief medical officer. Please, the captain needs medical attention. Some of the others too..."

Chakotay looked Krell up and down. He looked to the cargo bay doors. Where the hell was Paris when he needed him?

Just at that moment they heard hurried footsteps approaching down the corridor. Seconds later Paris appeared, looking slightly dishevelled, the hair mussed. He tugged at his shirt, pulled himself into some order. What the hell? The man - handsome as hell but the angriest damn pilot he ever saw - looked like he had just emerged from prodding his prick up someone's ass.

"Paris!"

"Yes, Boss!" Paris replied, not looking at the heap on the floor. Chakotay thought Paris might have recognised Voyager's captain. It wasn't unlikely. She might have known the pilot's father. One day, he swore, if Paris didn't kill Owen Paris first, he would laugh driving and twisting his d'k tagh in Owen Paris's chest and drink his spurting blood. He knew why Tom hated his father. But that wasn't why he, Chakotay, desired to kill Owen Paris in his sleep.

Tom stood on attention, not moving until he was given the signal again. By that time, Tom's eyes fixed on one of the other prisoners. A young man in Starfleet gold. Hair straight and black as a raven's, a pair of black eyes in slanted sockets. Oriental...

"Hold that dick in of yours, Paris. You can have your meal later. First, escort the injured to the medical bay. This here," and then he pointed to Krell, "is the new doctor of the Liberty. He'll tend to the injured. First thing, get this woman seen to..." Chakotay looked down at Kathryn Janeway, used his booted toe to nudge her on her side. Keep her there until I send for her..."

Tom Paris gave Janeway one look, then snorted disgustingly. "She's all yours, Boss," he sneered, his lips curling in derision.

"Then I guess you know her."

"No, I don't know her," he stated flatly. Chakotay knew it was a bald-faced lie, but he let it go. Now was not the time to knock Paris to the ground.

"Can I mark my meal first?" Paris asked.

Chakotay relented a little. His eyes gleamed suddenly. Paris was the Badlands Bad Boy, but far from competing with him. Tom Paris was going to get competition from another source soon by the looks of the injured officer lying on the floor who until now no one seemed to notice and who bore a remarkable resemblance to Paris. Maybe the bloodied face and hands left little to recognise but he had seen the resemblance as if the man had lain there clean-faced and all.  

He nodded, wanting to see Paris at play and at the same time allowing Krell to lift Janeway into his arms. He saw how Krell turned his gaze away from Paris who walked up to the Oriental who looked scared enough to piss in his pants. The poor kid's eyes darted wildly as Paris grabbed his cheeks, pulled his face closer and then bore his lips down on the prisoner in a punishing kiss.

Chakotay knew the drill. He had seen Paris at work. His lips would bite into his lover's lips until they bled, then he'd proceed to lick away at the bloody mouth softly, gently, lovingly, roaming his tongue all over the bruised lips until they softened before they parted of their own accord and Paris plunged deep into his mouth. By that time his hands had left the prisoner's cheeks and had already begun to press the man's butt against his crotch just to show him how ready he was. He watched Paris knead the ensign's butt cheeks in a deliberately sensual way, stroking and stroking until he was satisfied with the result. And the poor ensign looked surprised when his lips opened for Paris to take the plunge. Chakotay noted the deep flush as the young one blushed.

It worked every time.

When Paris was finished, he gleamed at the raven haired ensign, proclaiming in dangerously whispered tone of voice, "You'll be good to me...Ensign..."

He didn't want to laugh as Paris released the bemused ensign whose erection strained against his pants,  showing that Paris had done his work.

Paris returned to the three of them, "Come, to the medical bay we go..."

Chakotay watched as they carried the injured out, stopping Krell first to take a last look at Janeway whose face appeared ashen, her lips dry. They hadn't eaten or had water the last twenty four hours and the cargo bay carried only a toilet. He resisted the urge to touch her. Her words seemed like a ghostly song from the distant past, as if it approached him from behind a hazy veil that curved and flapped lazily in a breeze.

He frowned again. He never saw her before yet she seemed to know him. Paris definitely knew her as he surmised she knew Paris too.

When he nodded to Krell to move on, he remained in the cargo bay, standing hands on his hips and pondering on why his cock had started itching again.

Minutes later he was in his cabin where the Megan Clone stood, stripped naked, with B'Elanna fondling her pussy.

"Her name's Jenny Delaney, Chakotay. Megan's twin sister..."

"I thought she had to be something. Now, let's see how good she is in bed," he murmured as he cupped her full breasts, squeezed them hard until Jenny cried out. He released one breast, moved his hand down to her vulva, parted her folds and slipped his forefinger up her cunny. The whiff of sex that emanated from her caught his nostrils; they flared. He was hard. The girl looked cocky, like her clone.

"Torres..."

Torres grabbed Jenny by her hair and pulled the screaming girl to the bunk which was moved away from the bulkhead leaving space between the bed and wall. Ayala stood watching as Torres pulled Jenny on to the bunk, flat on her back. Torres growled, moved between Jenny's legs and pressed her mouth against her cunt, sucking and prodding with her tongue. Jenny gasped and cried in outrage, struggled, but Ayala held her down. Then Torres  stood up and sidled up to him.

"She's wet, Chakotay. This one's a swinger..."

"No matter. If she's wet, she wants it. Ayala..."

Ayala pulled Jenny so that she lay across the bed, her head dangling over the side. He pulled down his pants, his rock hard cock springing from its restraints.

"No...please..." Jenny cried as Ayala pulled her head further back right between his legs, Torres smacked her cheek hard so that her mouth opened as she cried out. At the moment Ayala slipped the tip of his great cock into Jenny's mouth, shutting her up. Beads of perspiration grew on her face, her nexk, her forehead as she struggled. Torres leaned over and slapped her tits with Chakotay's belt until they were red, welts forming and criss-crossing. Jenny couldn't cry out. Instead, the urge to cry gave Ayala the opportunity to slip in until the back of her throat halted further entry. And there he remained lodged.

"Now," ordered Chakotay.

On his cue, Ayala pulled Jenny's legs up so that her knees almost touched her tips. Her cunt, pink and flushed and swollen already from the way B'Elanna had fucked away at it, looked inviting. Ayala, his cock lodged deeply into Jenny's mouth, pressed her knees wide apart. This time her pink ass came up, the little rose displayed prominently for Chakotay.

Chakotay moved between the bed and bulkhead, his pants already stripped down, his cock throbbing angrily it seemed to him. Gripping her butt cheek and pressing them wider than they already were, he pressed his cock tip against her rosy hole. He sucked in his breath as he felt her flesh move. Then he pressed until it gave and popped around his tip like it was sucking him in. 

"Now, sweet clone, I'll show you cocky..." he hissed, then suddenly and very swiftly, drove his cock up her tight, tight ass. Chakotay groaned with pleasure as he forced his way in, pulling out to his tip before banging in again. It felt good the way her ass moved with the force of his fucking, the way the rose seemed to swallow him, giving him unlimited access. Spirits, it was good! The woman's body had stopped struggling and now she was assisting him, it seemed. So he pounded harder, grinning diabolically as he noticed traces of blood where she started tearing. That should teach her. She was going to get it there every time. It incited him, his body going up in flames as he allowed the waves of pleasure to curl in his body. He closed his eyes, enjoyed the way his cock moved rhythmically, yet strongly in her, bringing him to the point where he was swelling up and about to burst.

Meanwhile, it was Ayala's signal to start pounding into the upside down presentation of Jenny Delaney's mouth. Torres knelt by Jenny's pussy and rubbed the little clit until she could feel her wetness again the moment she pressed three fingers into the hapless girl's cunt. Together they rode the girl, long and hard.

"She's cumming!"

"God, she's something..." he murmured as he shot his cum up Jenny's ass, her face rocking at the same time as Ayala spilled into her mouth.

When he finally pulled his cock out, he wondered idly why it was Janeway's face that appeared the moment he climaxed.

That had never happened before.

***** 

 TBC


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers are once again warned of the explicit nature of certain sexual situations. Pleased be warned that if you are squeamish reading about a twisted Chakotay or other equally debauched practices, that you rather skip this story. Many of my readers have already read this novella on VAMB [VoyagerAngel Message Board] and know what to expect as the story unfolds.
> 
> Thank you
> 
> vanhunks

* * *

Doctor Krell, Chief Medical Officer of the destroyed vessel Voyager, found himself in a Spartan though fairly modern medical bay on the Liberty. There were three beds, one a main biobed almost similar to the one of Voyager's sickbay. There were computers that bore definite Federation signatures - a reminder that they had sacked Federation vessels, as well as surgical instruments for critical care. It boasted one replicator that was offline and could only be accessed by the Liberty's captain and two of his cohorts.

"Don't try the replicator, Doc."

Kathryn Janeway lay on the main biobed. He had set her leg but kept her sedated because of the concussion she suffered at the time of the crash. Now she lay still, her injuries treated; she was breathing at least easier. It had been touch and go keeping her alive after she collapsed a second time in the cargo bay when Chakotay came looking for her. That Chakotay didn't know who she was led him to believe that he had never met her, but Captain Janeway's reaction told him something different. Krell sighed. If it was something that could keep her alive on this ship, she had to tell him, or they'd all be lost forever.

He looked over to the other two beds where Nick Locarno and their Science chief, Lieutenant-Commander Rollei were recovering from their injuries. Nick had been severely burned. He had kept them both awaiting further treatment so that they could be spared just a little while longer from the ignominy Commander Tuvok, Jenny Delaney, Harry Kim and the rest of the survivors suffered at the hands of the crew the last fifteen hours. He experienced a dreadful guilt that Chakotay sought to spare him only as the ship's medic to help in fixing up his crew. So far none of the Maquis had marched in here to hustle him away from the medical bay for their dreadful sex games and degeneracy, a form of torture he knew was meant to subjugate and control.

An hour ago they threw Jenny Delaney into the medical bay. He had to remove Nick Locarno from the one bed and place her on it to treat wounds she sustained on her breasts, her pubic are, anal tears. The girl had been hysterical in a quiet kind of way, too quiet he thought. He was concerned. He heard her sister was also on the Liberty. Jenny had been aflame with humiliation but he had managed to soothe her, reminding her that he was a doctor. The girl had wanted to kill herself. He understood why the replicators could only be accessed by the cruel lead and his gang of rapists. Almost as soon as he had treated her wounds, she had been carried off again, this time to become the slave of one of the Maquis members. He sighed and shook his head.

When they were brought into sickbay, he had been ordered to work on the Captain first, stabilising her before starting on the others. Then he had returned to her, set her broken bones and treated the burns on her legs. He had scanned her neural activity, frowning as he found an anomalous reading on the tricorder, discovering a tiny dark patch at the base of her skull. It wasn't a blood clot, of that he was certain. Janeway would have been dead long ago. And, it wasn't something that had been brought about by the concussion she suffered, though it could relate to an old injury. He would have to wait until he brought her out of her sedation to ask her a few questions about it before removing the offending patch.

Strange thing, he thought. The tricorder showed only a feint signal, and would have been missed by anyone who didn't know much about the workings of a medical tricorder.

Harry Kim had been dragged from the medical bay by Tom Paris and two of the Maquis who looked to him evil, though not half as malevolent as Captain Chakotay. He had no doubt as to Harry's fate and felt excessively sorry for all of them. Jenny Delaney had been screaming when they dragged her from the cargo bay and she too was left in little doubt about what would happen to her. They all heard the stories. Now they were confronted head-on with them not as the conquerors they thought they would be on their dangerous mission, but the vanquished whose fate it was to be whored on the Liberty, other Maquis vessels or whored out into slavery.

Chakotay had been astute to transport them to the Liberty seconds before Voyager exploded. They were good to be bargained with, trading opportunities, revenue for the Maquis, sex toys.

He looked up, disturbed when Tuvok was thrown right through the open doors of the medical bay to land at his feet. The Vulcan was severely beaten, his face a bloodied pulp. He turned Tuvok on his back and the Vulcan moaned slightly, not wanting to give in to his pain.

Krell propelled himself into action, treating the semi-conscious Vulcan right there on the floor for injuries sustained to his head, ribs, stomach, his lower body. About half an hour later, Tuvok rose to his feet, still groggy, but stable at least. Tuvok was stoic as he moved forward and stood at the biobed, staring down at the captain.

"I am sorry, Commander. If it is in my power at all to protect you..."

"Doctor, we are alive," Tuvok replied succinctly. "I trust we can keep the captain from any harm but I am afraid that does not appear likely. The...treatment..." Tuvok was quiet a few moments, gathering his strength and his equilibrium. "The females on board suffer more. I do express concern that Captain Janeway - "

"Then, Commander, we must both try our very best. At least she is alive and who knows, we could salvage something from this mission. You are Chief of Security, therefore I should tell you I have found something in my examination of the Captain that concerns me a little. Perhaps it's an old injury. Only she can tell..."

They both looked down when the captain began stirring awake.

"Captain..."

The captain looked at them in turn, her eyes still a little heavy from the sedative.

"Doctor? Tuvok?"

"We are surviving as best we can, Captain," Krell said as he helped her to a sitting position. Janeway rubbed her legs in an exploratory manner, felt there was no more pain, no broken bones or jutting fractures. She touched her head.

"We must be brave," she said quietly, hollowly as she looked at him.

"Captain, I have treated your injuries, but there is something. Your brain, at the base of your skull..."

He noticed how her eyes became shuttered and he thought she looked reluctant to speak about it.

"It's nothing."

"Captain," Tuvok started, "I think you should let Doctor Krell know. It may be your saving grace."

Krell looked at Tuvok, grimaced that they knew about something of which he was kept in the dark.

"Only Captain Janeway and I know, Doctor, and now you will too. Captain?"

"It's an MRT - memory restoration transponder."

Something clicked, something dark and dangerous that could possibly mean their deliverance. But the MRT was embedded in her skull. The Maquis would never find it; retrieving it could be life-threatening. He couldn't tell her that, yet. Though with instinctive insight, Krell knew that Captain Janeway was aware of the risks it carried.

"Captain? The memories... Are they yours?" he had to ask.

"No, Doctor Krell. They're not mine. They - "

At that moment the doors of the medical bay opened and Chakotay, followed by B'Elanna Torres,  strode purposefully towards them. Krell heard the captain gasp. She looked up at him, her eyes imploring, her demeanour anxious.

"Krell, not a word...please..."

*********

 TBC


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 6 & 7 focus on Chakotay and Janeway. 
> 
> Readers are once again warned of the explicit nature of certain sexual situations. Pleased be warned that if you are squeamish reading about a twisted Chakotay or other equally debauched practices, that you rather skip this story. 
> 
>  
> 
> vanhunks

* * *

The Klingon's breath fanned her face so close she stood to Kathryn. She bared her teeth. Kathryn heard a growl that emanated from the woman's mid-section, growing low and forceful until it reached her throat. Kathryn stood her ground, even as Chakotay had already stripped and now stood, legs apart, aroused, belt in hand. Kathryn's neck hairs bristled as she cast him a glance, recoiling from the look in his eyes.

"Don't think you'll get away with this," she hissed, and didn't care whether it was Torres or Chakotay whom she addressed.

"Torres, take off her clothes."

"No!"

Torres laughed and without much respect and decorum pulled her jacket off. Before she knew it, Kathryn stood topless. Then suddenly she was on the floor on her back. Torres had nicked her legs from behind, buckling her knees so that she keeled over.

Kathryn tried to push herself up, but the movement provoked Torres. Kathryn gave a cry of pain as long nails scored her sides where Torres dug her fingers and pulled her pants off. Her panty was left on, and the sigh of relief she wanted to give was short-lived when Torres pulled her to her feet again. Blinded by anger, Kathryn lashed at her,  her knuckles making contact with Torres's jaw.

"p'TaQ!"

Next moment Kathryn wondered hazily why she tried to fight Torres. Her head snapped with the force of the strike, sending her reeling across the bed. She raised her head, saw Chakotay who stood impassive, never lifting a finger. When she couldn't breathe, she realised Torres's fingers were curled round her throat, choking the life out of her.

"One day, you'll regret this..." she spat at the Klingon the second Torres released her grip.

What happened next Kathryn would remember with repugnance, recoiling instantly as Torres sprawled along her body, her hips grinding into her. She was trapped for the moment, but soon realised the Klingon was too strong for her. Her legs were tangled with the Klingon's, her pubis hurting from the unholy grazing and rubbing imitation of sex.

"Look at me...Captain Janeway of Voyager." Two fingers clutched her jaw and forced her to stare into Torres's eyes. A wild, feral cat whose only instinct it was to mate.

"Good..." The next moment Torres kissed her, forcing her lips open and plunging her tongue deep into her mouth. She struggled, but the Klingon simply caught her wrists above her head and continued kissing her. Kathryn closed her eyes, tried to blank out the smell, the relentless bruising of her lips.

Torres released her so suddenly that she gasped out loud. She tried to avoid looking at Chakotay and instead, turned her head the other way. She tried to wipe the blood from her mouth but Torres grabbed her wrists again, pulled her off the bed. In a smooth motion from gripping her wrists to gripping her hips Torres knelt in front of her and pressed her face against her pubis, and though she still had her panty on, it was no barrier as B'Elanna inhaled deeply. For a few heady seconds Kathryn felt the Klingon's tongue darting like a snake's tongue in and out of her pussy, the strength of the thrust pushing the fabric into her. Her heart pounding, Kathryn wondered if the Klingon was going to bite right through the fabric. 

A few moments  later Torres rose to her feet and turned to Chakotay.

"I don't think she's ready, Boss."

Up until that moment Chakotay had never moved or spoke much. Kathryn took a good look at him this time, noting how his jaw twitched, how his... She closed her eyes, tried not to see how aroused he was, evilly aroused. He remained enigmatic, uncompromising, wild and dangerous, his eyes never wavering from her. With a nod of his head, Torres understood a hidden command. The next moment, the cabin was lit - too brightly, for Kathryn blinked several times to adjust to the illumination.

Torres pulled her towards the bed again, made her sit down on the edge. Her hair had been loosened the moment they had left the sick bay and hung in long strands about her face. A flat cushion Kathryn never noticed was thrust suddenly underneath her. She almost slipped off the bed so close to the edge she sat. A stool was pushed  under her feet.

"Put up your feet, Captain," Torres commanded. "It's even better with her boots still on, Boss," she called to Chakotay. The Captain's going to be fucked with her boots on..."

Her breasts already ached from the pressure of Torres's weight on her earlier. She had no idea what to expect, except that she was being humiliated beyond any degree of respect and that her worst nightmare was happening. No, she decided. Losing her crew was her worst nightmare. How many worst nightmares did she have? Long before the Badlands... Sighing, she raised her feet on the long stool.

"Now spread them."

When she took too long, Torres pressed her knees, already almost reaching to her breasts, wide apart. She was splayed before the Klingon woman. Once she complied, Torres bent down and buried her face in her pussy, inhaling deeply, growling as she sat up again.

"I want to fuck her, Boss," Torres keened. "Let me fuck her..."

It was quiet for several seconds. Torres gave a sigh and moved, settling herself behind Kathryn, her legs dangling on each side. B'Elanna pressed heated lips against her neck. Kathryn tried to remain calm, not giving in to the Klingon's insistent fondling as she started licking and sucking, covering Kathryn's hands so that her palms cupped her breasts with B'Elanna's palms over hers. She tried to push Torres away, but the surprising strength hidden under the soft fondling unsettled her.

"Torres!"

His voice sounded strident, dangerous, daring Torres to challenge his authority.

"Yes, Boss?"

"Get her wet for me..."

"Sure," Torres replied, her hand sliding down inside her panties. Kathryn gasped as B'Elanna's fingers reached her core. She tried to wiggle free but a knife in Chakotay's hand pressed into her neck.

"Try to move and you're fucking dead."

She felt like weeping. She had done enough of that. She wasn't going to give in, she swore on that. But the Klingon had already ripped one side of her panty, leaving her hands free to roam.

And roam she did. Kathryn cried out in shame as Torres found her clit. Then pressing little soft kisses against her neck, her long hair pushed away, B'Elanna began to rub the clit in gentle, circular motions. Another finger dipped into her vagina, testing her moistness. The finger felt cold as it slid up her pussy and by the time it was pulled out slowly, took some heat with it. The gentle rubbing continued with one hand working on fondling her moist folds, the entrance of her pussy, the thumb caressing the hair on her mound.

Kathryn tried not to think. Tried to remain detached. This woman fondling her was no novice. Deftly, she touched Kathryn's centre, sweeping her fingers over, then dipping deep inside her, looking for warmth, getting it. In and out, in and out B'Elanna moved, her goal to whittle her defences which she realised with deep, aching, blushing shame, was succeeding. Her juices began to lubricate the insistent fingers, pulling out with what Kathryn knew must be her creamy sex discharge. She heard B'Elanna grunt with pleasure.

The woman's ministrations created havoc in her head. Kathryn tried desperately to resist the onslaught of B'Elanna's finger fucking, so gentle that it surprised her. Her pussy folds had long pried themselves apart like a pair of drawn curtains that allowed the full view of her cunt for hundreds of eyes.

An image flashed in her mind. A smile, a kind smile. A man. A loving man.

That was her undoing as Kathryn gave herself over to the sensual caresses of the Klingon who began to growl again with pleasure. Kathryn leaned back against Torres, her face lifted, her mouth open as the Klingon continued. Then, unexpectedly, as the pressure built up in her, she found herself in a vortex of a sexual fantasy, of pleasure that coursed through her heated lower body, the dampness of her skin evidence of her readiness,  of craving the touch so much that she arched towards the woman. A soft nip on her earlobe and Kathryn gave a soft cry as she careened over the edge into a climax.

She felt the first trail of tears that ran down her cheeks as Torres released her.

"I guess she's wet now, Boss."

"You bastard..." she whispered as Chakotay approached her. He grabbed her hair and pulled her close to him.

"What did you say?"

"There will be hell to pay, Chakotay," she warned him.

But Chakotay took no notice as he flipped her easily on her stomach, with Torres instantly kneeling beside her, stroking her cheeks, kissing the tears that had fallen unbidden.

Such it was that Torres remained kissing and caressing her face, crooning to her. All the while her body shuddered on the bed as Chakotay's belt tore the skin off her buttocks.

*********

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 6 & 7 focus on Chakotay and Janeway.
> 
> Readers are once again warned of the explicit nature of certain sexual situations. Pleased be warned that if you are squeamish reading about a twisted Chakotay or other equally debauched practices, that you rather skip this story.
> 
>  
> 
> vanhunks

* * *

He was blind. Of that he was sure. Torres was into Janeway's face and hair, kissing and fondling and caressing while Janeway's body rocked, lifting off the surface as his belt cracked against her unresisting skin.

It had been her eyes that killed any resolve to be at least a little more lenient with her than he had been with the others. Her defiance was infuriating, radiating so subtly from her body and face that Torres would never have noticed even as she climaxed into Torres's probing fingers. Her head had been thrown back allowing Torres to plant kissed in the hollow of her neck. Janeway's her eyes closed at the caress but when she opened them, glaring at him, the defiance, the indisputable aristocratic bearing that sent out a thousand messages that he was nothing and she was something got to him. That was when he lost it He wasn't going to use his belt, he swore to the spirits on that.

Gods, her skin… It was translucent, a delicate alabaster he was certain he had never before touched here on the Liberty. He hadn't touched Janeway yet to refute or corroborate his appraisal of her smooth skin, but his eyes picked up every pore, every vein, fine hairs the same colour of her skin, like a light dusting of a soft powder, making them almost invisible, but visible to him. The hairs danced on her skin as she moved. This was something different, something exciting, something challenging, something wildly shocking.

Janeway protested, feigned, bit, gasped audibly, cried her outrage, tried to fight back, but her eyes were pools of defiance - from somewhere inside her, inside her head, inside her heart, her mind, everywhere in her damned body, her spirit remained untouched.

Her soul resisted his onslaught. No matter what he was going to do with her, the worst of the worst, he was never going to get into her head.

And that was why he couldn't stop beating her, her tender skin breaking, tearing, weals criss-crossing her back - angry weals that grew red and tender and told him enough was enough.  The swish of the belt as it went through the air, the crack as it made contact, the woman as she lay taking his punishment - infuriated him to hitting harder.

"Move, Torres!"

The Klingon stood up reluctantly and glared mutinously at him. The next moment his belt made contact with her face.

"Get out."

"Okay, okay, Boss…"

When Torres left, he pulled Janeway by her hair on to her back. She gave a cry as her skin burned through the grazing against the bed cover. Wild eyes, tearful eyes, defiant eyes. He gave another cry as he raised his arm high above his head.

When he started hitting her again, all she did was turn her face away from him.

When he stopped, she didn't look at him.

Chakotay bent over her, turning her face so she could look at him. Her nose was bleeding, and blood seeped from her mouth. Transfixed, he kept staring at her wounds, his eyes trailing over her body, her tits, her navel, the gentle swelling over her hips, the area between her legs.

Her wounds were extensive, far more than he had inflicted on any woman in his life and this woman had taken everything he gave her, taken it and threw it back at him.

Chakotay closed his eyes, and inexplicably he felt a prick behind his eyelids. Why did he feel like the universe was upending itself on him? Did thousands of cloud billows move towards him with the sole  objective of swallowing him whole?

He opened his eyes and looked at Janeway's pussy, then bent down like Torres did to inhale her, wake him up again an it worked. When he was fully aroused, his cock so hard and distended, the tip angry and purplish and throbbing, all he wanted to do was bury himself in the semi-conscious woman's depths. He resisted the urge with great effort to just fuck her and get on with it, reaching his climax when he decided it.

His fingers started probing, her body so limp and unprotesting, so completely without any mind-inducing injunction to withstand his probing, that he found her soft, pliant, her folds moist, her depths wet, her nub pink and swollen. 

He wanted to wake her, but he had chased Torres out, something he had never done before. His cock itched again, the itching starting from his navel working its way down to his distended and pulsing knob, settling just at the seam between his cock and his balls.

Groaning, he spread her legs, pushed the cushion under her hips and in a smooth movement entered her. He groaned again as her pussy walls took him in, hot and moist and inviting, to his mind. His head exploded when he filled her, a warmth suffusing his entire body. What the fuck was happening to him? He wanted to pull out, but at that moment Janeway moaned into wakefulness. Giving a final groan he cupped her face, unable to avoid her eyes on him, eyes that challenged him, eyes that, how ever much he tried to blot it out, seemed to invite him. Her pussy swamped him, swelled and adjusted to his pulsing thickness and all he could do was give in to her. 

When he started moving, it was with the wild, unbridled, yet controlled, pounding of a resisting virgin lying beneath him, but he couldn't conjure the faces of B'Elanna, or Megan or Jenny or any other woman he had wantonly violated on the Liberty and whom he simply fucked in a no holds barred contract entered by him and signed by him only.

Janeway's body shuddered with each hard push, each shove of his cock deep into her and with each thrust he felt he was violating the conditions of his contract.

All he felt was the unaccustomed fire in his cock that raged from tip to base, a fire so wild and out of control that he couldn't stem the tide of his pounding. And then, Janeway's face intruded into brain. O, lucky brain that had helped Chakotay ten times out of ten to be in exclusive control. Janeway didn't resist, but he felt her fire fanning his own;  he felt how his movements changed from pounding indiscriminately into her to a motion so alien to him that he paused for a single moment only, to look at her face. Her eyes were closed this time, yet her body, connected to his, held him fast, assimilated him into hers and he wondered idly how awake and aware she was.

And so he began to caress her, tenderly moving without the hard, frenetic fucking of earlier, but enjoying every thrust with unbelievable pleasure. He felt the pressure build in him, rising again from his very depths, sinking deeply into her and collecting more warmth, more invitation. But he couldn't remain untouched, couldn't prolong his thrusting for the long periods he had been used to. His mind told him he could continue fucking this woman into the early hours of the morning without once breaking contact with her body and glorious cunt.

His body turned tail on him. It yielded to her, spell-binding wonder that it could happen to him.

Even in her semi-conscious state it seemed as if she were the one wielding power, with no added assistance of arching back and bucking hips, fingers that scored long furrows down his back. Almost doing nothing at all, with only her body, her vagina that seemed to swallow him up, Kathryn Janeway made him lose control. He was coming, and he had no control over it. The final thrusts, hard, yet not punishing, hurried him towards the edge. He cried out desperately as his body became rigid, then burning all the way as he spilled his seed painfully into her.

He cried out gutturally, gasping, his damp body collapsing over her in total abandon.

"Kathryn...Kathryn..." her name slipped from his mind, a name that, somewhere from the depths of his consciousness, rose from him and filled the room.

He lay shuddering and when the twitching finally stopped and he could breathe evenly, he lifted his head.

Janeway's eyes were open this time.

He couldn't make out whether it was her tears on her cheeks, or ones spilled by him. What baffled him  was the extent of her injuries. As if he woke from a deep, drug-induced slumber, it startled him that he had punished her so severely. He gave a cry of distress, frowned heavily as he began gently licking her skin, from her face, her wounded breasts, her thighs. Turning her on her stomach, he cried out again. He moved away, startled, and began to dress himself.

When he was dressed, the d'k tagh ever present by his side, the belt around his waist, Chakotay bent to remove her boots. He collected the ends of the light bed cover and rolled her carefully into the blanket.

He lifted her in his arms, her head falling back. On an impulse he dropped a kiss on her cheek before he carried her out of his cabin and made his way to sickbay.

*******

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers are once again warned of the explicit nature of certain sexual situations. Pleased be warned that if you are squeamish reading about a twisted Chakotay or other equally debauched practices, that you rather skip this story. Many of my readers have already read this novella on VAMB [VoyagerAngel Message Board] and know what to expect as the story unfolds.

* * *

"Captain Janeway!" cried the Ketarchan, his distress obvious in his green eyes.

The Ketarchan looked like he could drive ten daggers through him. The Vulcan - still in sick bay - appeared impassive. Chakotay was certain that the extraordinary glint in the Vulcan's eyes was one where he would, without compassion, pluck the life from him with the pressure of two fingers.

If the Vulcan killed him, it would be nothing. His life meant nothing before now. It was the weightless woman in his arms who needed medical attention, who concerned him beyond his expectations. They could think what they liked. The Vulcan stepped closer, his bearing threatening. Of course he raped the woman on the biobed. Of course he beat her senseless, of course he beat her to a pulp, of course he...

Chakotay was afraid of no-one.

He challenged the Vulcan.

"Come one step closer, Vulcan, and I'll have you ejected out an airlock into the nearest plasma turbulence."

It gratified him to see Tuvok step back, though not that far. It also surprised him that he spared Tuvok's life. Goddammit! Yesterday he wouldn't have thought twice of doing just that.

"Move!"

Tuvok backed down. Chakotay didn't want him in his face.

He placed Kathryn on the main biobed, the one she had occupied when he had come to collect her. He remembered her face then, the momentary fear she tried to bank down, they way she walked with him to his quarters.

"This is not you. You're not yourself..." she had said with quiet dignity.

Torres had guffawed all the way down the corridor until they reached his cabin and he had glared at the Klingon. She stopped laughing instantly.

He wasn't himself? Hell, that was an understatement. He whipped Megan Delaney into submission, fucked Jenny's brains out, lashed too many young ensigns or simply shoved his cock deep into their untried virgin depths, laughing at the way they screeched like scared pigs. He didn't think that was abnormal.

But Janeway got to him and he had almost killed her. He never killed a woman on his bed. Janeway had come close. And that had been because she resisted him without once fighting back, without ever raising her voice. No, just her aristocratic bearing.

Yeah. He wasn't himself. He had gone overboard with Janeway.

He tried again, vainly, to blot out his deviant behaviour. He had always been deviant, always enjoyed seeing the dominated squirm, laughing at their humiliation and shame. He fucked any orifice as hard and as often and as long as he could hold his cock stiff. It didn't matter to him. The ass was as good as the pussy, as good as the mouth. Hell, a girl's mouth... He made them cocktails of his semen to drink before ramming his hard shaft down their mouths afterwards. He tied them down on all fours, ordering them to move about like a dog and like a dog he would drive himself to madness feeling how their little asses opened and closed round his heated rod. Most times he had had Ayala and Dalby in and then  they'd all three fill up the trussed girl and fuck her till she lost consciousness. He'd want to be so deep in a girl's mouth that he'd make her lie on her back, cover her head with his hips and drive his cock into her mouth, fucking like he was positioned over her pussy. Ayala easily sat behind him and got into the girl's pussy.

Sometimes, they roared as they climaxed, especially when they whipped the girl into a frenzy that she spilled all over them. Once he had Torres spread before him and he roughly exposed her pink clit, larger than anything he had ever seen. Then he'd take a plastic staff and he'd whip her clit by flicking it hard against her until she screamed her orgasm with energetic pleasure.

Deviant.

Why was it bothering him now? Why were there dark specks - blobs of tiny shadows really - dancing in front of his eyes?

"Fix her up, Doc. Now."

He watched the doctor remove the bed cover from Kathryn's body. She lay naked, exposed before them. She was beginning to stir awake, moaning. He didn't want to look at the Ketarchan or the Vulcan or listen to their inward muttering of anger. He kept his eyes on Kathryn's wounds, long, ugly red streaks across her breasts, stomach, pubis, arms, thighs, neck, calves. He heard the sharp intake of the doctor's breath, heard the shuffle of feet as Tuvok threatened again forward. Without looking, his hand had already drawn the d'k tagh and he was pointing it at Tuvok's neck.

"One move from you… If you neck pinch me here, my crew will come looking. I've alerted them," he hissed like an angry cobra, then focused his attention again on the damaged body of Kathryn Janeway.

The specks bothered him again. Like little wisps that teased his retina, maddeningly picked at the part of the eye in which silent figures from a distant past danced upside down, mocking him.

Why had she been Janeway all the time and when he couldn't control himself, he whispered the name "Kathryn" with so much desperation? What in hell's damnation happened to him? Yeah, she was right. He very definitely was not himself. Was he then a version of Chakotay again? The alter ego that tapped his shoulder and reminded him he had another side?

His fingers curled tightly round the handle of the Klingon dagger. Spirits, he should drive the thing into his own flesh just to feel some pain. The doctor hesitated before starting treatment. He looked up to see the Ketarchan's eyes on him.

"Get on with it, Doctor…"

"You must leave, Captain Chakotay."

The Ketarchan held the scanner ready. The regenerator was also on hand to repair broken skin, relieve her pain.

Chakotay sheathed the d'k tagh and curled his fingers round the doctor's wrist.

"I will stay."

"Only so that you can violate her again, Captain? This woman… It is the worst I have seen - "

Chakotay saw red, the dark specks still troubling him. He was having trouble just seeing them and breathing was a jagged essay of inhaling and expelling air. Then he gave a little sigh.

"I will make certain no one touches her."

"Captain Chakotay, with respect, this is the work of one man…"

He almost, almost decked the doctor right there. Why was he feeling guilt?

"It will not happen again, Doc. I give you my word."

"Your word," began Tuvok, "is only as good as the sounds coming from your mouth. They leave it empty."

He looked at Tuvok, bit out, "Seems to me you haven't heard a word I said, Vulcan. I will not harm her again."

Tuvok nodded stoically.

The Ketarchan continued working on Kathryn, repairing primarily broken skin, dimming the dark ugly bruises that were forming on her buttocks, everywhere on her body.

"There are two hairline fractures," he said, listing her injuries.

When he turned her on her back again, her eyes were open and she looked straight at Chakotay. Her hair fell about her face in long golden tresses. Chakotay choked. Her hair was caked with blood.

But her eyes...

It was a moment in which he knew he would have to accept and live with her defiance, however subtle it appeared. He was never going to get into her head. Her eyes darkened. She had no more pain. It was shame mixed with anger that stared at him. Why did she remain fearless now?

"Chakotay?"

He frowned. She could have heard it from anyone on board, or down in the cargo when they came to collect the prisoners. In fact, she called him by his name there too. He had been too preoccupied, already too into Jenny's waiting cunt to notice. No, it issued from her mouth as a sound familiar to her, and ought to be familiar to him. The specks appeared again and he blinked hard.

"How do you know my name?"

She turned her head away from him but he leaned over and made her look at him.

"I won't hurt you again…ever..." he promised, perplexed and surprised that his words sounded genuinely compassionate, that the remorse that sat deep in his gut flew out with the words, tinting each letter, each syllable with a kindness alien to him. It was a promise that came from his very depths.

Yet he knew, he wanted her with him, during the day, at night, in his bed.

Did something in his eyes give him away? Why couldn't he see  her properly? Why was he feeling as if Earth, way in Federation space, blue planet with a body of water larger than its body of land was swallowing him? He grit his teeth, tried desperately to remain standing. The waves of nausea, the sudden onset of a headache did nothing to relieve this strange feeling of drowning somewhere.

Her voice came from far, over mountain tops, blue skies, bright skies and land, beautiful land with long grass gambolling like lambs as the wind played with it.

"Chakotay…Chakotay…"

With superhuman effort he dragged himself back to the known, the familiar, away from the kindest, most melodious way his name had ever sounded. When at last he could see clearly again, three pairs of eyes were on him.

"What - what did you say?"

"You can stop the violence on your vessel, Chakotay. Only you can do it," came Kathryn's soft voice.

And instantly, the aggression was back.

"No! No, this is my ship. My rules, my codes, my contract."

"Captain Chakotay, I'd like to keep Captain Janeway here for observation…"

He turned from the Ketarchan to the Vulcan to Kathryn.

"At 2100 I will come to collect you, Janeway," he said suddenly, feeling the old vengefulness rising in him.

He left, ignoring their protestations.

****

The moment Chakotay was out of earshot, Kathryn looked up at Doctor Krell, pulling the cover protectively around her body. She was without any clothing now, her uniform, torn and soiled, lay in Chakotay's cabin.

"Captain, I am indeed deeply sorry that you have had to endure such inhumane treatment," said Krell. "You require rest." He held the hypospray up and as if it were a trigger of some kind, Kathryn gave a little cry of consternation.

"Please…no hypos, Doctor. I - " Her eyes closed. She had been semi-conscious when Chakotay violated her, awake when Torres fondled her. She needed to be awake. She had noticed how Chakotay himself was close to collapsing. Something was happening to him, something out of the ordinary. While the doctor remained sceptical, it was Tuvok who knew what may have troubled Chakotay. But, as bad as their situation seemed, they had to bide their time, and every minute longer on this vessel with a leader who thought nothing of raping and pillaging, spelled further humiliation for her and the rest of the survivors.

"Captain, about the MRT..."

She sighed deeply, wondering if she should tell the doctor. What if they too, had died in the explosion? Did a strange quirk of fate keep them alive? Chakotay had transported ten of them to his ship. Shaking her head, she closed her eyes. Chakotay was far, far more evil than she had imagined. Yet, he transported key personnel from Voyager...

"All I can tell you, Doctor Krell, is that we have to be back in Federation space at the Vulcan Science Institute to remove the transponder successfully..."

"If we make it out of here, Captain, I would much appreciate to witness the procedure."

"The only problem we have, Doctor, is that it cannot be done without a family member of the Captain present..."

With that it seemed they appeased Doctor Krell. Her mother was dead and Phoebe... Kathryn's hand balled into fists. She depended heavily on Phoebe...

Kathryn lay back on the biobed. She felt inordinately tired, trying not to think of Chakotay's body joined with hers, or Torres's probing fingers. She felt again the humiliation of climaxing when Torres fondled her, but that had been because she had lost concentration for a moment, seeing a face, a familiar face with loving eyes and hands, hands that would never, ever have lifted a finger to inflict any kind of harm on her. That had been her undoing. Chakotay's body had moved with hers, and even though she was hardly conscious, she sensed instinctively that she had unsettled him, that she had become a person, not an object he violated, but a body with a name that made her real to him.

"Doctor," she asked, when a thought struck her, "where are the others?"

"Harry Kim is still alive, Captain."

She sighed with relief.

"Jenny?"

There was a long pause. Jenny Delaney had been the first to be removed from the cargo bay...  Kathryn's eyes flew open.

"Jenny, Doctor?"

"I am afraid she has died, Captain Janeway."

It was more than she could bear as she closed her eyes and allowed a tear to roll down her cheek. She choked back a sob. Jenny Delaney, Megan's identical twin. Jenny, fun loving, yet so serious as a stellar cartographer. Jenny, blonde, beautiful, kind... If they had been a gang that attacked her, someone had to lead the gang. It wasn't Chakotay. Chakotay had been with her...

"Who - who was responsible, do you know?"

"Thomas Eugene Paris, Captain. Lieutenant Delaney must have resisted very hard. Skin under her fingernails, her teeth... Semen... There were traces of his DNA on Jenny's body. If there were others who helped, Paris was the primary culprit."

Another long silence ensued. Tuvok gave a little cough.

"There's something you're not telling me, Krell," she said, exhausted.

"Tell her, Doctor Krell."

"What is it?"

"Tom Paris' DNA matches yours, Captain Janeway."

*********** 

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers are once again warned of the explicit nature of certain sexual situations. Pleased be warned that if you are squeamish reading about a twisted Chakotay or other equally debauched practices, that you rather skip this story.

* * *

B'Elanna Torres was not a happy camper. She fumed, mumbled, railed, but nothing could make the items she carried in her hands, disappear. The Boss would have her hide just like he did Captain Janeway if she tried anything.

She could still feel the lash of the belt against her cheek. She had done nothing to have it tended to and didn't care if stained her face forever. At least she would have something of the Boss on her. She avoided the rest of the gang in the mess hall, kept to her bridge and engineering duties and saw to it that her engines were running at optimal efficiency, whatever that meant for the Liberty. This time it was Gerron who was piloting the Liberty on their way to Alkorea. Paris was busy fucking Harry Kim's brains out with the help of Dalby, Ayala and a few others.

She wanted to avoid Paris. The man irritated her no end and knew just where to hit where it hurt.

"I hear the Boss has a new fuck. Care to tell me about it?"

And that had been even before Chakotay had dragged her along to the medical bay to collect his latest fuck. Janeway had been quiet as they marched her to his cabin, had spoken once which caused her to laugh her head off. Chakotay had given her one look and that shut her up effectively. After that she did what she did best: assist the captain of the Liberty to violate the prisoner any which way. She had mastered the art, working mostly to get his attention too. Last week he finally paid her by sweeping her up in his arms and throwing her down on his bunk. She had been overjoyed beyond her wildest imagination. The man had never been inside her, and that night she thought he'd make her his forever. She had tried to soften him, and to make the sex something tender, like making love.

She was sometimes so damned naive.

There was no such thing as making love in Chakotay's contract. She didn't think he knew what that was. But it was good enough for her. They had time, lots of it, and every now and then in a future with him on the Liberty when he was going to shove his cock up her ass, or her mouth, or her pussy , she was gradually going to break his resolve so that one day he would succumb and love her the way she loved him. She had given everything and more the night he had her in his bed, spreading as wide as she could for him, her body on fire as she tried to bond with him.

But no, she realised, not a living soul in the Badlands could make a home inside Chakotay's head.

And if she couldn't get under his skin, she was going to make sure no one else would.

He had chased her out of his cabin for the first time. Janeway got to him. That's what happened. He wanted her for himself. It was as plain as the light of the two moons of Alkorea, their base. He wanted Janeway for himself. He never actually said it in the way he could be imperious with the other prisoners, saying "this week she's mine, after that you can have her." Then he'd violate the poor prisoner for hours before letting her into the corridors where the boys picked her up. He was very clear on his tastes, and he quickly, very quickly dispatched a woman when he'd had enough.

Now, Janeway.

Torres fumed some more as she approached the medical bay. She had a feeling the captain of Voyager was getting under Chakotay's skin. She had seen his eyes, furtively dared to look at him before his belt lashed in her direction too. Yes, his eyes had given him away, though he tried to shutter them. It seemed he could lick the skin of Janeway's entire body, so hooked he was. And that only minutes after she was pushed into his cabin.

"I hate her already..." she muttered under her breath.

In her hands she held the clothes Chakotay had ordered her to bring to Janeway.

What could she do? He had replicated a full set of clothes, down to underwear, for Janeway. If she thought that Chakotay used her size as a guide, she was mistaken. She had arrived after he barked his order that she come to his cabin. Thinking that he wanted to have some fun and games in his bed, she rushed to his quarters, out of breath when she got there. Chakotay had stood there with the clothes neatly displayed on his bed and he had taken extra care in folding them and handing them to her.

"Make sure she gets it, Torres, or there'll be hell to pay. I'm watching you..."

"But - but..."

"But nothing, Torres. No questions. Whose rules do you follow here?"

When she said nothing, he grabbed her hair and pulled her closer so that she could see the pupils of his eyes. They were blazing.

"What do you say?"

"Yours, Boss. Sorry, Boss."

"Good, now get your sorry ass out of here and take the clothes to sickbay."

Torres drew in a deep breath as the sick bay doors opened. Her gaze fell on Janeway, now sitting up on the biobed, the bed cover wrapped round her.

_She doesn't fear me..._

That was the thought that flew about in her head. Torres had barely taken in the presence of the others in the room - the Vulcan, the doctor, the two comatose prisoners whom she was dead certain the doctor deliberately kept that in that state.

She walked up to Janeway. Her hair, golden blonde, fell about her face.

_You can say what you like, but I was in your pussy..._

It was a prurient thought designed to put the woman in her place - an object to be used by the men on the Liberty. But it did nothing, nothing in Torres's mind to push out the woman's obvious class. And so it fanned her anger.

She threw the clothes on the biobed.

"There. The Boss wants you to dress up for him."

Janeway stared at her. Then she smiled.

"Thank you, B'Elanna."

Blinded by the woman's reaction Torres stepped forward, ignored Chakotay's command to leave the prisoner alone.

"He'll use you..." she said sullenly.

"Like he uses you?" The voice was soft, the question sounding not like a question, but a statement, as if Janeway knew she was damned right.

Torres remembered that Paris looked at her the same way and told her the same thing - _Chakotay is using you..._

She saw red. She was blind. She couldn't touch this woman, because Chakotay would find out anyway.

"p'TaQ!"

Then she spat in Janeway's face.

Without looking back, Torres strode out of the medical bay.

***

Still angry, she made her way to Paris's quarters. She had no taste for Dickson who waited like a beggar in her cabin. She was just so mad as she entered Tom's cabin without announcing her presence.

"He's got the hots for her, Paris," she said while Tom was lodged firmly against the Oriental's ass and Dalby was working Harry's mouth. Paris looked at her without actually pausing, continuing to ram his poker into Harry in deliberately even, though strong  strokes.

"That's your problem, Torres. Told you not to fall for the Boss."

"He just pushed me out."

"Come, on, Torres. What do you expect me to do? Janeway can go to hell for all I care and if that is with the Boss's dick up her sweet little cunny, so be it - "

"You don't understand, dammit!"

"I understand only too well. I know Janeway. She was my Dad's little pussy girl, didn't you know?"

"What?"

"Seemed to me he couldn't stay out of her panties, just like Daddy couldn't stay out of her mother's panties..." Tom paused this time, gave Harry an almighty wallop on the left buttock. "Be still, Harry. I'm not done. Here, let me get you up again, honey..." And with that Tom stroked the ensign's cock until it swelled to ramrod thickness. All they could hear from Harry was an unintelligible moan.

"There...there now...see how lovely you've grown, darling?" Tom said, all the time moving rhythmically in and out of Harry's anus. "God, I love a good fuck..." he murmured, throwing his head back and enjoying the action.

Harry's erect cock was an invitation, a flag waved at a mad bull. B'Elanna's cunt felt thick and moist. She was itching like hell, maybe to drive out some of her anger at Chakotay. She stripped right there and slid under Harry's belly. Once she lay with his cock primed just above her pussy, Tom dropped him, and Harry sailed deep into her cunt as if he belonged there. Tom's arms braced them as he kept the weight off her, maintaining his position over Harry's back, pushing him into slow motion against Torres.

"Now, Harry, honey, ride our little B'Elanna for us, will you? She's in need of a fuck."

And Harry, his mouth free of Dalby shaft, the cum dripping from the side of his mouth, murmured

"Yes, yes..."

He rode Torres until he was spent, while Tom finally prepared to climax, crowing loudly as he spilled into Harry. He lay like that, over Harry and B'Elanna.

"Hey..."

"Sorry, Torres, am I too heavy for you?" he said with a smirk as he pulled out of Harry. Like most of the men on the Liberty, Tom was completely unaware of his nudity. They were almost always naked in their cabins.

"Now, Torres, what was it you said about Janeway?"

"She's going to sleep with the Boss."

"Sleep with, as in becoming his lover?"

"Aye."

"And you're jealous."

"Hell, no!"

"Hell, yes! Come on, Torres, 'fess up. The man you wanted wants the Captain of Voyager. He's not concerned with the small fry such as you are. She's a big fish. A very beautiful big fish. My Daddy liked her."

"Yeah, you said that. Was she his lover too?"

"Maybe, maybe not."

"I think there's more to Janeway and you than meets the eye, Tom Paris."

"I think if I ratted on you, Chakotay would kill you. Now, you've had your little pleasure. Get out."

"Fuck you, Paris. And fuck Janeway."

"Sorry, Torres, but you know my tastes."

 Tom swatted Harry's ass possessively. He turned Harry on his back, lay next to him and started kissing the ensign, his tongue flicking Harry's lips until they opened and Tom slid his tongue into his lover's waiting mouth.

 Torres, realising she wasn't going to get anything out of Tom now, cursed, then left the cabin.

  ********

 TBC


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One chapter today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings still apply, but this chapter heralds a change... I hope you enjoy!

* * *

Chakotay couldn't take his eyes off Kathryn where she stood opposite him ready to seat herself at the table. She looked good in the clothes he had replicated for her, surprised that he had instinctively assessed her size correctly. A three-quarter length top over her pants gave her a fragile appearance. She was thinner than he had imagined. Yesterday he had been unconcerned by her physical build except... He sighed inwardly. Yesterday he didn't care.

"I see the clothes fit," he said, a lump working in his throat. It was at least a reasonable starting point to a conversation. When he gone to sick bay to collect her, no words were spoken between them. He had simply held out his hand - yet another unaccustomed action on his part - and she had followed him out, giving the doctor and that Vulcan a concerned look.

They could remain in sickbay, he decided. He had already instructed his men not to touch any of them. It was the least he could do in the face of his extreme atrocities. About the other prisoners... Sometime he would have to make a decision about them too, relieve their plight a little.

And all of it was the fault of the woman standing in front of him. His unbridled beating of her, the unbridled and uncalled for sexual dominance over a body that was half-unconscious...

"Well?" he asked.

"Thank you."

She remained standing, her reluctance to be in his quarters palpable. She was afraid of what he'd do to her even though he promised he wouldn't harm her again. Though to look at her, it was impossible to gauge that that was what she was feeling.

"Please, you haven't eaten in three days. Eat."

He could see how hungry she was and was relieved when she sat down and began to eat. There was silence for several minutes as he watched her. He had hardly touched his own food, just observing Janeway. There were tell-tale bruises he could see in her neck and on the back of her hand. He knew that Krell hadn't removed all the bruises on her body. It shocked him again, though he hadn't wanted to feel anything for this woman who seemed to know him from somewhere.

"Chakotay..."

"I promised no harm would come to you, Janeway. You will be a guest in my quarters."

"The others?" she asked, reluctantly, it seemed to him, meeting his gaze. He knew she referred to Torres and Paris. Torres had not touched her when she'd taken the clothes to Janeway, but he was dead certain that she did do something, like spitting in Janeway's face.

"She spit in your face."

"How - How did you know?"

"I know my people, Janeway. Every vice. Torres has her moments."

She sighed, and finished her dinner. He had replicated wine as well and she had taken very delicate sips from the glass, leaving more than half of it still there.

"You have duty, Chakotay. I - I need to do something here..." her voice trailed away.

"Dalby is in command right now. I - I want to spend the evening with you."

He frowned. A flash - something from those corn fields under bright sunshine, blue skies, full moons, dawn over the Grand Canyon - and a sharp pain stabbed through his head. He gave a small cry, clutched at his head, trying to understand something that was beyond explanation.

"Is anything wrong?" she asked.

Her voice was full of concern, the worry clear in her eyes.

"Don't feel sorry for me, Janeway. It's nothing - "

"But - "

"It's nothing. Leave it at that," he bit out, rising suddenly from the table.

He was surprised that she followed him and sat next to him on the bunk. The bunk was bigger. Torres had been none too happy when he ordered that she arrange a larger, three-quarter sized bunk be installed in his cabin. He had given Torres a dirty look, wondering when she was going to explode. Torres was jealous. She was jealous of any woman who became his afternoon and evening fuck for longer than five days. They were nothing to him, simply objects that were fitted with a cunt, a mouth and an anus.

A hand rested against his back. Again he experience a blinding flash leading to momentary pain. Why was this woman affecting him so much?

"Janeway..."

"Please, call me Kathryn..."

"Yesterday...yesterday I did you no favours, Janeway. I treated you like I treated every other female on the ship."

"I'm a prisoner," she stated simply. He looked at her, still feeling the palm of her hand against his shoulder blade. He blinked, trying to stem the blinding flashes again.

"I raped you, Janeway."

She looked away, but not before he saw the shame in her eyes again. He wanted to take his dagger and cut out the part of his brain that made him do the things he was doing. He couldn't see beyond his violation of her, and yet that was what he did. So why did it feel to him again that she stirred something hidden very deeply inside him? He was always in control of his faculties, always the hardened Maquis rebel leader bent on destruction, of breaking the spirit of their prisoners, especially the female prisoners. Nothing was ever going to melt the hardness away and reveal something that wasn't there. A softness he disregarded as part of his make-up.

The hand against his shoulder felt like a caress and distracted,  he pulled her closer. Her softness, the subtle fragrance of the cologne he had replicated along with the clothes entered his nostrils, assimilating every nerve in his brain, turned him inside out. She buried her face against him. It sent shock waves through him -  this caress, this endearment.

He wanted to tell her again that he hadn't spared her the previous day; he wanted to tell her that she was no different from any other woman on the Liberty and therefore she deserved to be violated and beaten by him again and again.

He wanted to brush his lips against hers and feel the light electric shock that not only curled in rolling waves in his body, but kept his lips connected to hers. He wanted to run his tongue gently along her lower lip and feel how soft under his touch it was. He wanted to nudge her lips open that he could slip his tongue into her moistness and just linger there, tasting her nectar, the faint smell of the Picard Shiraz on her breath, allowing her own moistness to lubricate his parched lips. He wanted to run his tongue along her teeth, feel each one in succession, until he could probe into her warm depths. He wanted to die of the shock of feeling her tongue bruising his own, so heated it was, burning into every taste bud, every pore that affiliated itself to salt, sweetness, even bitterness. He wanted to feel her teeth nipping his lower lip and die of the pressure, even though it must have been the lightest of feather-like caresses.

He wanted to press her down on his bunk  - the extra large bunk - that would allow two persons to lie comfortably in each other's arms.

He had no idea of time or space or even texture. Everything coalesced into a continuum where all things pertaining to space and time, past and present and future, every point in the universe occupied simultaneously where he knew he would, no matter where he found himself, see her lying before him, naked. He would see her needing him; he would see himself needing her with such a great intensity that it would be impossible to measure the depths of his need.

"Chakotay..."

His name fell from her lips like a sweet benediction, a prayer that filled his continuum where he could hear it over the icy aloofness of mountain peaks, the silvery sheen of the Great Lakes of Ketarcha, the distant plains of the Serengeti... 

It was a sound that caressed in the mellowness of a well-matured wine.

His eyes fell away from his face. His ears were filled with sounds that resonated from the very same tranquillity and timeless peace that the Himalayas always seemed to evoke. It seemed to him that his fingers moved through her skin where her bruises silently, mercifully dissolved and with them, his sin.

"Kathryn, I am touching you..." came his anguished words which when uttered, staggered his mind because he couldn't understand them, and it was this incomprehension, once acknowledged, that emblazoned itself in every touch he made on her skin.

He had no idea how he had come to be lying naked beside her or how his hands, defenceless appendages that listened not to him, but acted on her impulses, removed her clothing.

Entranced, a little perplexed, he caressed her peaks, soft, firm, full breasts that ended in tight, erect little nubs. Hands raised, hands lowered, hands that tasted, yes, tasted the texture of her hair, traveled over her body and where he hesitated at the apex between her thighs were given an unexpected bonus of being guided to her moistness, the weeping depth of her, yes, even 'instructed' numb index finger to probe that moistness, the weeping sides of her sheath. They told him she waited for more.

How could he give more? He was incapable of understanding, knowing only hardness against hardness, where nothing gentle and soft dwelled in his realm. Yet, the hardness was there, tempered by the softness, the sweet invitation that she wanted to be a part of him just as, the spirits help him, he wanted to join with her.

"Kathryn..." he murmured her name again as he raised himself over her, positioned his shaft where she, just as driven by her own need, had already spread her thighs and lifted her hips to him. Her hands roamed the landscape of his body - great plains, deep ravines, rustic mesas and triggered the rains that came not from the skies, but oozed from his drought-filled realm upwards and rested as thousands upon thousands of minuscule droplets on his parched skin.

Rain. His dry season was gifted with it and it came in abundance. His head was brought close to hers, hands that left the rugged rain-filled plains and cupped hungered cheeks. Her legs shifted, her hips raised; her soft folds burned him alive as the tip of his cock touched, nudged and then slowly journeyed into her.

Not the hardness and violence of before. Not the terrible punishment of before. Not the hatred, the anger he could never understand in himself, only feeling it and feeding it. Not the object with an orifice that didn't invite, but got invaded.

No, none of those counted now as he lodged in her, not moving yet, simply revelling in the joy of the connection, the bond. Once they moved together, he couldn't discern whether he was lying over her, or on the bed, or in her. The only awareness was that they were floating, rising higher and higher, flying over icy mountain ranges, dipping sometimes to skim the silvery waters of the lakes. There was no point that he could articulate what pleasures he experienced, the suddenness of the indescribable waves of sensuality that enveloped them.

He sensed he moved in her and that she returned every thrust measure for measure, although it never registered as a definite, actual thought in his head. They moved. They thrust. They clung to one another with an abandon that shocked as much as it rejoiced.

Never had he experienced this. Yet somewhere, from far, far, far, away, he sensed that there must have been a time that he loved.

Kathryn's soft moans alerted him finally to the present, the immediate, his body thrusting deeply, strongly into hers.

Strange, so strange how he measured her strength and matched it with his own.

His body, rigid in his preparation for the final release, capped itself over her, yet his chest heaved, straightened, and then came the explosion.

It lit his continuum into bright light so white that he was blinded. Yet it was a blindness in which he could see things so clearly.

He saw her running towards him. She wore a blue dress and the skirt of it lapped against her ankles. She was laughing, her hair fanning in the breeze, her voice bright when she cried his name in joy.

Only when he wanted to touch the spectre of his white realm, she dissolved.

"Kathryn!!"

A silence settled around them and bathed them in its softness. Her hands held him close to her, protectively, possessively. He lifted his head in agitation, for he had seen her again, for a moment only, in her blue dress.

"Chakotay? What is it, sweetheart?"

He gave a giant sob even as his body was still joined with hers. He collapsed, burying his head in her neck.

"Kathryn, Kathryn," he cried with desperation, "in the name of God, tell me - who _am_ I?"

***** 

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings still apply. Added this chapter 11 as well for today.

* * *

They were unaware that he had woken up. Nick Locarno lay motionless, listening with great interest to the conversation between the doctor, Tuvok, Chakotay and Captain Janeway. He turned his head to take a look at the swarthy Maquis leader with a tattoo on his left brow. He had seen that tattoo before, way back when he had been a green cadet learning flight maneuvers by one of the great captains of Starfleet. It was the same man who stood in sick bay now, barking orders at the others.

The man looked dangerous, every inch of his lean body sheathed closely in a combination of leather and a rough dark fabric which made Nick wonder at the true nature of their mission and how much Captain Janeway was really hiding from them.

For sure, she had to come in and take Chakotay, the Maquis rebel, prisoner and deliver him into the waiting arms of Owen McKenzie Paris. For sure, he knew Owen Paris was the king jackass Federation unholy man cloaking himself in the veneer that upper-class bearing offered. This immunity hid a multitude of sins and Owen Paris had made himself guilty of every sin in the universe.

In the penal colony he was brought up to date on the Federation brass's corruption, their power stretching to the outer reaches of the Alpha Quadrant. Power to entrap, to jail, to rob individuals of their identity, and, in Paris's case, overstep the filial boundaries that dictated how a father, a husband and a superior ought to behave.

There were stories floating about Starfleet and the Federation jails about O. M. Paris, the man who masterminded the jailing of one Chakotay who had finally managed to escape, but not before Paris did a real sick number on him. What it was, nobody knew, but after that Chakotay became a fugitive from the long arm of Federation law, the man who was once the finest starship captain Starfleet ever had.

With such an illustrious beginning, how did the man become what he became? Did he have a life? Rumours were rife that the Maquis rebel had a life, a real good life before he became bad. Now, Nick had tried to hide his shock at hearing of the atrocities that the crew of the Liberty indulged in, atrocities engaged in, aided and abetted by Captain Chakotay. 

The doctor, Tuvok and Captain Janeway were unaware that he was listening to them. Awake, free of pain, free of the oozing blood from his acrid skin, scars that blotched his face and arms. He had passed out several times in the cargo bay from sheer unbearable pain. Now, he felt relief.

But what good was his relief when he heard that Captain Janeway had been violated  - raped - into submission by the very man ordering them around in the medical bay? What good was his relief that the words "Harry Kim is alive" portended more - things dark and evil and atrocious -  than just being alive? That it could mean what he suspected - the worst of the worst that could happen to a young man? A young man who was his friend? What good was his relief when he heard them say that Jenny Delaney had been raped and beaten so badly that she died?

What good was his relief?

Harry was his friend - the first friend he made after Captain Janeway bartered for his freedom from the New Zealand Penal Colony. Life had been no picnic in jail. Inmates were subjected to the same manner of deviant sexual practices he heard about in the Badlands and especially from this band of Badlanders - the crew of the evil maniac Chakotay of the Liberty. He had himself been subjected to such domination until he found the strength to fight back. And how did he fight back! Got the authorities finally to acknowledge that prisoners needed protection inside the prisons too. They had been deferential to him after he had beaten one of the kingpins to within an inch of his life. He had seen to it that most of the prisoners who had been turned into wives were better treated, and left alone.

That was life in a Federation jail.

To this day he still felt sick that his friend Josh died while his Nova squadron performed the banned Kolvoord Starburst Maneuver . To this day he still felt eaten by guilt, by remorse, by admitting that his own super charged belief that they could succeed with the maneuver led to one cadet's death.

Senior Starfleet Cadet First Class: Nicholas Locarno. Responsible for the death of Joshua Albert.

And that was the end of his career. More than a thousand times he wished that he never made that decision that led to his downfall. After being expelled from the Academy his life went on a downward spiral, until he landed in jail.

And then his reprieve. Captain Janeway thought he was still the best pilot the Federation had to take Voyager into the Badlands.

Yeah, he heard about Owen McKenzie Paris. He had heard about Thomas Eugene Paris, crack cadet and pilot who bailed out of the Academy after Owen Paris once again did a number on his own son. This Tom Paris who was on the Liberty and participating in abusing their prisoners.

Tom Paris was responsible for Jenny's death? Tom Paris whom every known Dick and Harry reminded him, bore an unusual resemblance to the Federation's other Bad Boy? The Badlands Bad Boy and the Federation Bad Boy.

Yeah. He was going to be bad. He had enough dirt on Paris to make him squirm. He was sorry for the things he did, for letting an innocent cadet die. He was sorry for being kicked out of the Academy. He was sorry for landing in jail where he fought tooth and nail to escape a life of servitude as another man's "wife".

He had no doubt what Harry had been subjected to. The horror of it was all too real. "Harry Kim is alive."  It meant just that - he was still alive.

Nick turned to the figure on the other bed: Lieutenant-Commander Rollei. The man was still unconscious or sedated, more likely. If he summed up their doctor correctly, the man's immediate mission was to keep some of the survivors safe for as long as possible.

When the doors slid close after Chakotay left, the doctor's words hung heavily in the air.

"Tom Paris's DNA matches yours, Captain Janeway…"

The news didn't shock him. It was more like a few missing pieces of a puzzle fitting into place. Why hadn't anyone seen it? He heard O. M. Paris tried to shag Captain Janeway. Now that wouldn't have been strange. O. M. Paris was into incest.

Was it any wonder Wonder Boy Paris could hate anyone? But now was not the time to feel sorry for Tom Paris, so he took the things he heard in sick bay and kept them close to his heart. It was time to take action, even if he had to die in the process. His life meant nothing to him, not in Federation space, the jail, or here on the Liberty where men like Paris thought nothing when they violated indiscriminately.

He drifted off again into slumber, wondering if the doctor had given him poison that delayed its reaction and kept him slumbering longer than was necessary. He had to admit, he thought drowsily, that he was damned tired. He closed his eyes finally and sank away into the oblivion of sleep.

**

He had no sense of time when he opened his eyes again, except that it felt as if he had woken from a very deep sleep. He turned his head, sighed with relief when he realised that the doctor and Tuvok were still in sick bay and Lieutenant-Commander Rollei was still lying on the other bed.

"Doctor…"

The doctor and Tuvok turned to face him. Tuvok had been studying the read-outs on one of the monitors. Krell moved quickly to his side. The Ketarchan appeared relieved to see him awake.

"Lieutenant Locarno, how are you feeling?"

"Better than most, Doc," he replied. "I should get up - "

"I would not advise that you leave sick bay."

He wouldn't have advised it either, had he been the doctor. But he wasn't. He was Nicholas Locarno, bad boy wanting to make good. Captain Janeway had been a little shocked when she saw him at the New Zealand Penal Colony. She didn't have to say anything. He had already been told about a thousand times how he resembled Tom Paris. Heaven forbid that they could have been spawned by the same man. Though, knowing O. M. Paris's penchant for other men's wives and girlfriends, not to mention his particular penchant for little boys, there could be an outside chance. He'd rather there not be any chance at all. Their resemblance was a fluke of nature. The connection between Tom Paris and Captain Janeway was not.

Nick looked past them where Captain Janeway had lain. She was no longer there and it shocked him a little. They didn't know that he had been awake when Captain Janeway had been treated for her severe trauma and that maniac Chakotay had done a good job of tattooing Janeway's entire body with his belt.

"Where is Captain Janeway?" he asked, his heart thumping wildly.

"Captain Janeway is with Captain Chakotay," Tuvok answered, moving away from the console he was studying.

"Chakotay came in two hours ago to take Captain Janeway with him. He made a promise that Captain Janeway would come to no harm," added Doctor Krell.

"Like bloody fucking - " He watched Tuvok's reaction. "Like bloody hell! Doctor, that man is going to kill her..."

"What?"

"I - I heard you earlier. Jenny is dead, I know. And Captain Janeway  might as well be dead by now."

"Do not be concerned, Lieutenant Locarno. I have set up this console here to monitor Captain Janeway's life signs. While she remains in Chakotay's quarters, she will be safe."

"I'll take that with a pinch of salt, if you'll forgive me. Doc, I must get out here and find that Tom Paris."

"You heard."

"I just told you. Yes, Tom Paris who was the kingpin in the lynching."

"Your life will be in danger, Lieutenant Locarno," Tuvok told him. "This is a ship of death and dishonour. Stay here."

Nick sagged back on the bed. He watched as Tuvok moved around the medical bay, looking for something, clues, ways to manipulate the consoles, anything. They had to get off the Liberty and they had to get Captain Chakotay out of the Badlands.

He had to get Tom Paris.

Jenny was a kind young woman, a brilliant cartographer. She was one of the few who befriended him, no questions asked, and he had liked her, really liked her. Her sister Megan whom they knew was on the Liberty had already been whored, and no doubt Harry too as well as the rest of the survivors. He felt much stronger after his prolonged rest and recuperation and now he wanted to go out and find the bastard who had done Jenny Delaney in.

Nick waited until Tuvok's attention was on something at the opposite end of the medical bay before he made his move. He rose stealthily from the bed, wearing ironically a hospital issue Federation gown and pants and a pair of slippers he held in his hands and made his way to the doors. What lay beyond those doors he had no idea but he wasn't an ex-con for nothing. He figured no door could remain locked to him.

Once he stepped into the corridor, he heard the concerned exclamations of the doctor and Tuvok.

***

Nick moved furtively along the corridor and almost jumped out of his skin when he heard a voice behind him.

"Hey!"

And before the Maquis could hit his commbadge, Nick lunged forward, grabbed the man by his neck and with a swift twist of his arm  had the man lying unconscious on the floor.

"I could have killed you..." he said to the unconscious Maquis. "Doubt whether you'll wake up anytime soon." He lifted the man under the armpits and thrust him through the door from where he had exited. Once inside the cabin, Nick dragged him to a small alcove.

Half an hour later he stood, dressed in the Maquis's clothes, with his commbadge pinned to his jacket.

"Now I am Linus Cochrane of the Liberty. Sounds good to me..."

Nick kicked the unconscious Linus.

"I should kill you…" he murmured again as he picked up the phaser, balanced it on his palm first before hitching it to the belt. Nick stood around for a few moments, saw with no real surprise that the Maquis's console was still activated.

"Stupid man," he whispered as he seated himself quickly. "Federation technology. How lucky can you get?"

Entering a few keys, he had the specs of the ship, making a mental note where the cabins of key Maquis personnel were located.

"Computer, locate Harry Kim."

"There is no Harry Kim on this vessel."

"Smart move."

"Please rephrase."

"Go to hell."

"Rephrase."

"Computer, locate Tom Paris."

"Tom Paris is on the bridge."

"I can live with that."

"Please rephr - "

Before the voice could continue, he shut down the computer.

Nick gave a sigh of relief as he rose from the chair. He adjusted the trousers belonging to the comatose Maquis and made his way to the corridor. How he managed to move about without being seen, he never knew. It may have been his Maquis dress, making him for once glad that he resembled Paris -   but he counted himself very lucky when he reached the cabin assigned to Tom Paris. He took a deep breath and began decoding Tom's codes, the doors opening within seconds.

"Lucky me..." he murmured as he stepped inside.

The scene that greeted him made him want to rush to the bridge and eject Paris out an airlock.

Harry Kim was on the bunk, on all fours, his back arched inwards so that his butt jutted up. His knees were spread and Nick could see his balls and cock in the low illumination. Harry's hands were cuffed and a chain kept the ankles tied to the bed.

"Please, no more…" he heard Harry cry. The man looked wasted, Nick thought, and when he moved so that he could lift Harry's face, the ensign gave a cry of terror.

"Paris!"

"Harry, it's me, Nick. Hey, don't you recognise me?"

The poor ensign with his black eyes and raven hair that was matted to his scalp looked sceptical as he tried to move away from his reach.

"Come on, Harry. I know I look like that bastard, but I'm not him, okay?" he assured the young man, moving quickly to pick the lock of the cuffs. "Lucky bastard I knocked out had this cute army knife. Now it's mine," he said by way of explanation.

When Harry's hands were free he gave Nick a grateful smile. Then he covered his face and gave a few hard sobs. By that time Nick had begun to untie his feet and when he finished he rifled through Tom's wardrobe for cothing.

"Looks like you're about Tom's height, Harry. Take a two minute sonic shower. You smell like hell. Then you get dressed in this. Hurry, we don't have much time."

Five minutes later Harry stood, like him, dressed in renegade Maquis wear.

"It's a bit late to ask, Nick," Harry started, wanting him to prove his identity. "How did we meet?"

"Harry, Harry, Harry, we met at Deep Space Nine where I saved you from Quark."

"Only you could know that, Locarno."

It warmed him to see Harry smile, though he was certain that Harry's experiences would always haunt him. He grabbed Harry's arm and pulled him towards the exit of Tom's quarters.

"Come, we need to hurry out of here - "

"And just where do you plan to...hurry to?" came the voice of Tom Paris.

Then Paris looked at him, his eyes popped in complete surprise.

"You!"

***** 

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual warnings apply.

* * *

"Well, howdy, cousin Tom."

"I don't have cousins."

"You do have now, cuz. Seems you know of me too, judging by your reaction. Come in, come in," Nick invited. "It's your cabin after all."

Tom turned red as a beet, but not from blushing. He was angry as he advanced on Nick. Nick wanted to laugh. Had the man forgotten he carried a phaser he could have used on them, or had he been too shocked to see his double in his cabin? He guessed that lying bloodied and burned in the cargo bay had made him unrecognisable, so it was likely that Tom hadn't seen the resemblance.

Tom forgot for a moment that Harry was also still there and freed from his bonds. The small diversion gave the young operations officer the opportunity to move in behind Tom. As Tom tried to punch him,  Harry tripped him and he landed on the floor with a heavy thud.

"What the - ?"

"Your move, Harry," Nick said.

The next few seconds Harry kicked Tom in the belly, again and again, heaving as each booted foot found its mark. Tom gasped, the air whooshing from his lungs.

"You crazy bastard!" Harry panted between each thud. "You made my life a misery. I swear I'm going to kill you!" Then thud! thud! as Harry kicked Tom.

"Stop, will you? Stop! I can make it good for you," Tom huffed on the floor.

"What, you want to torture me more? Not on your life. Take that!"

After a few more kicks and punches, Harry stopped, heavily out of breath. He stood, wheezing as he looked at Nick. His eyes were wild, the shame and humiliation making way for extreme anger and retribution. Nick bent down  and pulled Tom up by his scruff and threw him on the bed. Harry went for him again.

"I'll kill you!"

"Harry, that's okay. We're going to make him pay, right, Tom?"

Tom was busy wiping blood that trickled from the side of his mouth. Harry's boot probably nicked him there too. Tom went for his commbadge this time, tapped at and found it wasn't there. Surprised, he turned dazed eyes on them.

"Looking for this, darling?" Harry asked as he poked it about Tom's face before pinning the communicator on himself.

"Harry, check his console, will you? Disable some restrictions. My guess is this one had high level clearance from his boss."

"What happened to the others?" Harry asked.

"Tell you later. Now get on with it."

"Nothing to it, Nick,"

He dashed to Tom's console where he seated himself and started entering commands, working furiously, looked back at them in case Tom had found a way of escaping.

"Excellent. Now, Tommy boy, take off your clothes...slowly."

"You b - "

"Tut -tut, sweetheart. Not so nice when the boot is, in a manner of speaking, on the other foot. Slowly, will you? I want to see your titties."

Nick heard Harry snicker.

"And Tom's little cunt, too."

He had already removed Tom's phaser when Harry tripped him and now it was set on stun, pointed at Tom who started removing his clothes, looking very reluctant. Nick wasn't into kinky practices, but Tom wasn't going to know that. Let him think they were going to fuck his brains out. Hell, the man really did resemble him. They could have been identical twins, let alone just twins. They had the same hair, the same eyes, the same way the mouth clamped close. He sighed. Not now, his own revelations.

When Tom was finally naked, he looked sullenly at Nick, but before he could make full eye contact, his fist landed against Tom's mouth. Then another punch. He was beginning to see red. He pictured Jenny, powerless against the force of a gang who raped and beat her to death.

"Now think how young Jenny felt, you fucking gangster. Think about it, Tom Paris, before I beat some more of your brains out. How does it feel when you don't have your backup? Oh, they're on their way? I am soo afraid of them! Harry!'

"Nick, I - er...Tom, I mean, just sent out a ship wide communication that he's not to be disturbed."

"See there? You just told your friends you're out of commission for the next two days."

"And, he changed the codes to his cabin," Harry added. "It's impossible for anyone to decode it. Not even that fucking Klingon Torres."

"You will never get away with this..." Tom muttered groggily.

"Ah, my cousin, I get away with anything."

"Weren't you supposed to be in a Federation prison? Being fucked senseless by criminals?" Tom goaded him.

He wasn't going to lose it. He spent too much time in that prison thinking.

"Oh, but Tommy darling, why do you think you're defenceless now? I didn't get to be the leader in prison. Started beating everyone up, see? If anyone breaks in here unexpectedly, he's dead, man."

"It won't work, you know. I got a nice piece of Harry's ass - "

"Don't listen to him, Harry."

"That's okay, he's nothing now, Nick," Harry muttered, getting up from the console, approaching Tom and calmly kicking him in the gut again.

For good measure Nick's hand clamped round Tom's neck and then proceeded to headbut Paris.Paris' head snapped back, unable to retaliate as Harry threatened t kick him again.

Then he walked to Tom's wardrobe and started rifling through it. He must have found something for he gave a whoop of surprise..

"What's that?" he asked.

Harry was mute for precisely two seconds after his whoop.

"I don't get it. How come he has a picture of Captain Janeway in his room?"

"Okay, Tom. Your move. Care to tell my friend Harry how you come to have a picture of this Starfleet Captain?"

"My father is going to kill you both should you ever make it out here," muttered.

Nick had taken the same cuffs and bound Tom's hands behind his back. He lifted Tom's chin.

"Who, do you mean? Owen McKenzie Paris? Same man who tried to fuck Janeway? He fucked a Janeway alright, but not Kathryn Janeway. Her mother was his victim."

"That's not true! Kathryn and her mother seduced my father. They're whores."

"Daddy told you that, huh, Tom? The same man who fucked his own sweet little Tommy boy so the poor kid didn't know if he should be a girl or a boy? Since you were about five or six years old?"

"You - you - " Tom heaved, unable to mask his anger this time.

Nick knew he hit a nerve, a very raw nerve. He would have liked to kill O. M. Paris himself for violating little children. He would have like to kill O. M. Paris himself for a few other crimes.

"Ah, he was into little children, right? You couldn't escape, Tommy boy and believe me, I really share your anger here. But your little sister didn't escape either, did she? Neither did a very great friend you used to have. Went by the name of Freyne Detroit, one time crack flyer, sometime prison inmate. Told me a few things about you..."

Tom struggled violently against his restraints. Nick glanced at Harry who looked shocked out of his wits at what he was hearing. Nick struck Tom's face.

"Sit still, you dickhead. We're not finished. So you grew up, developing your father's deviant ways, only you liked young ensigns like Harry here. You even teamed up with your own friend, Freyne Detroit until he decided to call it quits. Called you a sicko."

"He was deranged."

"Nick,"  Harry began, "what's that about Captain Janeway's mother?"

"You know anything, Tommy boy?" Nick asked Tom after slapping him through the face again, a stinging blow that snapped Tom's head.

"Cut it out - "

For which he was paid doubly when Harry's fists landed squarely against Tom's jaw.

"Talk to me, Tom," Harry ordered.

"I don't know. My father said she was evil. She seduced him and so did her daughter. I hate that fucking bitch."

"Correction, Tom Paris. Your sweet Daddy raped poor Gretchen Janeway when she wouldn't give him the time of day even after she was married to Admiral Edward Janeway. Now I am going to tell you that not many persons know this. They were given to think that Gretchen Janeway was a bitch in heat who invited Paris into her home and took it off for him."

"If that's how it happened, that's how it happened."

"That's not how it happened, sweetheart. Gretchen Janeway had a great friend who had an equally great son. Alan Johnson was Mark Johnson's father and Mark Johnson was locked away somewhere he couldn't get near Kathryn."

"I know nothing about that - "

"I guess you wouldn't. You were too angry and too busy being your Daddy's pussy boy."

"Why, you - "

"The man has no honour, no pride, no humanity. Pity he's your father, Tom," Nick said, feeling sorry for the first time for Tom Paris.

"Nick, about Captain Janeway."

"Ah, Tom, I suspected only what he doctor in sickbay corroborated. See, he studied your DNA, courtesy your skin under Jenny's nails. You share the same DNA with Captain Janeway. That makes her your - "

"Sister?" Harry asked, completely surprised.

"Aye, Harry. His sister. Though to give Admiral Janeway credit, he raised Kathryn Janeway as his own daughter. Gretchen is dead now, and so is Tom's mother."

"How did she die?" Harry asked.

"You're gonna tell him, Tommy boy?"

"She - she committed suicide. Took my sister with her too. I wished she had taken me with her," Tom said, his words hollow. "I wish she had taken me with her too. Left me with that fucking bastard who never left me alone again. Not even when - "

"You started at the Academy..."

"Yeah," Tom sighed.

Nick started beating him again, helped by Harry who kicked him till he rolled off the bed on to the floor.

"No more..."

That incited Harry even more. The blows rained on Tom until he was a mass of blood, his body limp.

Nick nodded to Harry and together they dragged the naked Tom out of his cabin, down to the turbolift at the end of the corridor. Crew who passed them stopped and gaped.

"Tried to kill me," Nick said. "Right, sweet Harry?" When Harry nodded vigorously, he added, "now we're taking this prisoner back to sick bay. He's not going to trouble us again."

In the turbolift Harry expressed his shock.

"They thought you were Tom."

"Of course they thought I was Tom."

"But you said you weren't related."

Nick sighed heavily, pictured his mother, single parent star of the medical school in her time.

"My mother was also a victim of Owen Paris," he muttered.

"But - but that makes Tom - "

"My brother. Yes, I know. I've always known."

"And Captain Janeway your sist - "

"Not a word of this, Harry."

******* 

TBC


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual warning apply. From here on light is filtering through!

* * *

She couldn't tell him everything. The time wasn't right. It wasn't possible to tell him everything because she knew that telling him would only make him realise without fully understanding that there was more at stake. So much more. He would act on only what she told him. He needed full integration and that, she sighed, had to wait until they were out of the Badlands.

Chakotay lay spooned behind her, his arm thrown around her in complete abandon, a light snore filling his cabin. It didn't unsettle her, his snoring. It was more an affirmation of normality than a physiological problem that irritated many women.

He had been distraught after their lovemaking, crying out that he didn't know himself anymore.

"Who am I?" was the question he kept asking, and later, when they made love a second time - it seemed to her that he couldn't get enough of her - he had been quiet. Sunken deep in his own thoughts, the facial muscles relaxed, without the strain and anger that had marked him in the first hours she had seen him, were no longer there. How long it was going to last, she could only hope and pray that it would be long enough to give them time to get him out. Her own safety and that of her crew depended on this slightly changed equilibrium.

But Chakotay was a deeply disturbed, deranged, maniacal man bent on revenge. Only Tuvok had any idea what prompted this and if anyone else knew, they based it in conjecture. His body joined so strongly with her, it established a lost, now familiar territory and she sensed it was this that caused such a major bewilderment in him. His rational being, the one he perceived to be the only one recognisable to him alone, was seriously compromised. Before her he had not known - in the Badlands at least - that he had an older and better point of reference for his ethics.

He believed implicitly that his moral universe, one in which he could practice obscene deeds and criminal acts and never be held accountable for it, but in his reality rather revered and condoned and equally practiced by his subordinates was the only one that existed for him. Before her, he had probably never had to question his actions for he believed that they were his rules, his contract, his ethics, his moral code if it could under normal circumstances be called moral.

Now, just the act of making love, of sensing instinctively that there was a part of him that had once seen light, that another force - that of goodness and honour and self-respect and the respect for the dignity of others - operated within him, made him quiver with insecurity and confusion.

If his crew could see him now, they would never think that it was the same man they always dealt with. Yet, the other force, the one that made him treat her body with so little respect, so little dignity, lurked unnervingly close to the edge of his reason. She was not fooled, or foolish enough to be naive in thinking that simply telling him he used to be a good man, would be enough.

What she told him, had to serve for now. A promise he made to protect her and also the rest of her crew would have to serve for now. She had been astute enough to bargain - albeit it subtle and never openly spoken in words - for her crew's safety for at least the next forty eight hours. It was a crucial time period they needed to regroup and plan ahead.

He had been satisfied, though she could see that he wasn't entirely happy, the suspicion still lurking in his dark eyes that there was more she wasn't telling him.

Kathryn closed her eyes briefly, her mouth curving into a sad smile. Chakotay had for a few seconds taken the belt again and raised his hand, but before he could bring it down on her still bruised skin, instantly retracted. Perhaps her bruises triggered something in his memory, perhaps he realised violence wasn't going to be his answer for once. He had sagged on the bed, clutched her in his arms and in a rare show of deep affection, asked her over and over to forgive him.

It was a start. That he could experience remorse. The Chakotay who dragged her the first time from the sick bay had  shown no mercy, no remorse when he violated her. At least she, even though semi-conscious when he raped her, could still affect him in a positive way. One that made him question his role as a Maquis leader, his role as the mastermind of evil on the Liberty and the Badlands.

"You were good once, Chakotay," she had said with conviction. "The same person, just - "

"Two different versions of me?"

"Yes."

"A long time ago?"

"Yes."

"What happened? You - you didn't enter the Badlands just to capture me."

"No," she sighed. "I didn't. But yes, you were a different man. The Federation - "

Chakotay's lips pursed together when she mentioned the Federation.

"What about the Federation?"

"Robbed you of your life, as surely as they robbed me of mine."

"Kathryn, here in the Badlands, I always believed that who I am, was the person I have always been. It was - still is, I suppose - a part of me I believe absolutely. I didn't think I had another life. I didn't think I had a life..." His voice trailed. The next moment her eyes grew wide with shock as he moved as swift as a snake and prodded her neck with his d'k tagh. "I could kill you now and blow you out an airlock. Then I'd have the next girl under me - sweet virgin - who would try to put up a fight. I'd put my belt to her to shut her up and calmly ram my cock straight up her cunt. No matter if she cries her heart out. Means nothing to me. Nothing, you understand? Right now I can flip you over and fuck your ass so you will scream for mercy and I wouldn't give you any. I'd call my men to rape and beat you and stand by watching them eat you whole. We will be in Alkorea in two days where I could sell you to the highest bidder. Know what the winner usually does? Makes a public display of fucking you on a platform to a crowd that knows only how to tell him to carry on, it's so fucking good."

He had paused, his brow covered in a film of perspiration, the sharp point of the dagger pressing into her skin. She wasn't going to cry out in pain. She wasn't going to give in to her own fear.

"But you won't," she said quietly.

"Now you tell me there's another Chakotay, someone who was different. Someone who was a victim of the Federation. Now you tell me the Federation robbed me of my life. What life? What _fucking life_?"

The dagger dropped away from her neck, fell to the side.

"Tell me, Kathryn..." 

"Your memories were altered, Chakotay. More likely they were removed..."

"What?"

There. It was out. Her heart had thundered. She wondered if he'd stick the dagger in her neck again. But something happened to his face. It became pale, so pale that it seemed he was going to vomit any moment. He clutched at his stomach, then he clutched his head as if a vein burst and he was going to expire any moment. His eyes became glazed; could he even see her properly? He groped for her, searching what she sensed was an anchor, and missing once or twice until he found purchase - gripping her arm so tightly that she winced. The disbelief in his face, layered upon the queasiness was so palpable that she want to cry herself.

She remembered Owen Paris's words, "You understand that you must bring him back, don't you?"

She looked at Chakotay, stripped momentarily of every strength he had, the cold-bloodedness of the way he raped, tortured, slaughtered.

And she thought, _Never could I deliver him into the clutches of Owen McKenzie Paris..._

Chakotay's response, a single word that stuck in his throat before it issued like a weak croak from made her want to murder Owen Paris. Owen Paris who killed her mother, who made his son Tom her half-brother... The man she suspected, also spawned Nicholas Locarno. The resemblance between the men was just too coincidental.

And, as if Chakotay read her thoughts, he asked, "Is Owen Paris mixed up in this somewhere?"

_Only you don't know how deeply..._

"I am sorry, Chakotay."

"I have been a different person?" he asked. "This is not my life?"

"You were a good man. The best." Her voice choked, remembering the man he had been. "The Federation saw to it that you would forget that...."

"I wasn't always like...this?"

"No."

They were quiet for the next few minutes, with Chakotay mulling over her words, the conviction with she had told him some of the truth. He frowned, he swore under his breath, he looked like he would cry, then he looked like he could kill her again in a swift stab of his dagger. If Jenny and Megan and Harry and the other prisoners came to mind, it was in the way the beads of perspiration settled on his brow, looking like drops of blood. There was something oozing from his mouth, down the side and when she took a cloth to wipe it away, the stain was a sick greenish colour.

What was happening to him? Literally happening to him?

The realisation not of his heinous deeds, but the fact that he was callously, without thought for any sensibilities, robbed of his memory and had it supplanted with all manner of evil... That was what was getting to him. The United Federation of Planets that had to uphold all that was great and honourable among its soldiers took away from him the most important element of his person - his humanity.

In the hours that followed, Chakotay was restless, and like a man drowning, holding on to her as his anchor. He made love with her with the desperation of the damned. And this time she allowed him such freedom as would purge him of his demons.

But, just before he fell in a restless sleep, he floored her with a question she had dreaded he would ask.

"Kathryn."

"What is it, Chakotay?"

"I made love to you. It - it is what made me sense something. You touched me...in here...and here..." he said, pointing first to his heart and then his head. "You were different, far different from the rest. As if my body knew you from another time and place. Only I couldn't understand why my body remembered when I couldn't. Do you understand that?

"Yes."

"Then, Kathryn, are you part of what I lost?"

She turned cold, couldn't speak for several heavy seconds. The air crackled with tension. She felt the old, old pain, a pain she never shared with anyone, that festered inside her like a cancer, eating away at every resolve, every thought that had Chakotay in it.

"Kathryn?"

She sighed.

"Yes. I am a part of that life."

"More than just friends, Kathryn Janeway?"

"More than that."

"Then Kathryn, did they take away the best part of my life?"

She wept, deep wracking sobs that wouldn't stop. Chakotay held her like the trooper he was, always protecting, always fiercely proud to hold her. Always just...Chakotay.

When she could compose herself, her words when it came, were hollow, sad.

"Yes, the best part of your life."

He gripped her shoulders firmly.

"Whatever it takes, Kathryn, I want that life back."

**********

TBC


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual warning apply, especially for this chapter.

* * *

"Lieutenant Locarno!" the doctor's voice sounded up, aghast when Nick and Harry dragged Tom Paris into the medical bay. Tom's face was puffed, his body limp. Tuvok was instantly on hand to help them haul the injured Tom Paris on the bed occupied earlier by Nick. Nick turned to the doctor, looking at the CMO with Tom Paris's eyes. Neither he nor Tuvok had seen Tom Paris who had, if not on the bridge piloting the Liberty, been in his cabin or the ship's underbelly maiming and torturing, raping and killing.

"Doc, to my eternal shame this idiot here who resembles me is one Tom Paris, son of Admiral Paris," Nick responded, pointing to the injured man on the bed. "I am Nick."

"Forgive me. For a moment there I thought - "

"That they slaughtered me too in the halls of the evil mountain king?" Nick asked.

The doctor had looked perplexed for a moment and Tuvok looked like he couldn't in his lifetime ever look surprised.

"I'd better look at this one. Who beat him to a pulp, do you know?"

"I swear to Odin I never laid a finger on him. Right, Harry?"

"Right."

Harry looked like a conspirator. In the turbo lift his mouth couldn't stop opening and closing from shock at his revelation that he was Tom's half brother and that Kathryn Janeway was his half-sister. No doubt the doctor would soon put two and two together, but certain knowledge was collateral damage against the overthrow of the Maquis in the Badlands. He was on a mission within a mission and they had to succeed.

"And Doctor, you might want to give Harry a medical check, just to make sure he'll not hallucinate. He thought I was Paris. Leave this hound and treat Harry first."

"You have taken a chance to walk the corridors of the ship, Lieutenant Locarno. It is not safe."

"Tuvok, Captain Janeway sprung me from prison, from a similar fate, understand? I can fight, I can defend myself. I was lucky to catch the first Maquis by surprise. Oh, here. The specs of the ship, and cabin locations of every crewmember," he said, handing Tuvok a PADD.

Nick gave Harry a smirk. He bet the young greenhorn had never even noticed that he carried one. He carried a dagger too, and a phaser, and a few other things that might be useful. The pants he wore  courtesy the half dead Maquis - the man may be indubitably dead by now - had a number of pockets, useful for carrying illegal items such as site to site transporters.  Though by way of the Maquis moral code, illegal was not a term they knew or understood.

Harry had been standing while the doctor checked him and declared him fit. Lieutenant-Commander Rollei was in the process of waking up. Nick could see the man still looked far out of it and was sure the doctor would sedate him again if only to keep him unconscious and out of commission. Doctor Krell had again studied the scans of Tom Paris.

"Lieutenant," declared the doctor, "I gather you know that Tom Paris is related to you?"

"To my eternal shame, Doc," he admitted, feeling like spitting on Paris.

"And that Captain Janeway - "

"Yes, I have always known that too, though I swear to Odin I never used my relation to her to be freed from prison. I came highly recommended as the best pilot in the Federation."

"I understand, Lieutenant. Now, Tuvok here has informed me that this vessel is heading for Alkorea."

"A trading post. Mainly trafficking in slaves, Doctor. I know."

"We have to prevent the Liberty from reaching Alkorea. If we knew this area of space well enough..." Tuvok said.

Harry looked fired up, angry enough to want to kill Tom Paris.

"Yes. They have already arranged that five of us be sold to slave traders," he answered.

Harry walked calmly to Tom's bed and landed a fist with all his might against Tom's jaw. "Bastard!"

Nick strode to Harry, grabbed his shoulders.

"Harry, Harry, Harry...don't kill the man...right now...  Doc will keep him in a coma for some time. He'll be inactive. Let Chakotay decide what's to be done with him. We have work to do. Come..."

"H-Hey, where are y-you going to?" Harry stammered, fear clear in his eyes as Nick pulled him out of  the sick bay. "W-What kind of work?"

"Lieutenant!" cried the doctor. "Where - !"

"See you later, Doc. You'll have your problem solved in a jiffy. No worries, okay?"

"Be careful..."

Back in the corridor, Nick pushed Harry against the bulkhead.

"Now, Harry, you're going to teach me Tom's mannerisms while we're going to look for someone. They will simply think I'm Tom and you're Harry, Tom's mate. Sorry, I mean no disrespect, okay?"

"Know what, Nick Locarno? It may not be necessary to teach you to be like Paris." Harry spit angrily on the floor. "You've got his mannerisms alright. Though not his manners. And your voice sounds like his."

Nick grimaced, not liking being likened to Tom Paris. Then he strode quickly to the first turbo lift, waiting for Harry to step inside before giving the order for a certain deck.

****

"Where are we going?" Harry asked as they skulked along a dark corridor near the cargo bays of the Liberty.

"You'll see."

They stopped in front of a cabin. Nick glanced at Harry, saw the fear in his friend's eyes and swore under his breath.

"Harry, don't bail on me now, okay? I need you to be strong."

Nick sighed as he punched in a code, hearing Harry's slight gasp.

"Amazing the things you learn in prison, Harry," he bit out as they entered the cabin. "Quick!"

Phasers drawn, they pointed at four men who scrambled off the bed for their weapons.

"Tom! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Ayala asked as Nick pointed the phaser at him and fired without answering. Harry clipped two while Nick stunned the last Maquis in the cabin.

They looked at the naked woman on the bed.

"Holy mother of God..." Nick exclaimed.

The woman lay on her stomach. Three men had been on top of her while the fourth... What the hell did it matter what the fourth one did? She looked wasted, wasted beyond any recognition. Lack of control, lack of dignity, lack of compassion, lack of sleep. Or, did the woman sleep and they fucked all her orifices? Was she so completely exhausted that she couldn't wake up anymore? He knew she was breathing, God help him. The woman was breathing. He took the bed cover, soiled with her faeces, her urine, their urine, their wine, her vomit, their semen, her blood, her hair that had been pulled out and bloodied blonde strands criss-crossing and threw it off.  Her feet were so bruised he doubted if she could walk.

When he turned her on her back, he drew in a sharp gasp of despair. Her breasts were cut or scratched, long jagged cuts, and her mouth was bleeding. He couldn't say whether the blood came from her throat that couldn't protest anymore against the cruel invasion and continued onslaught of someone's hardened flesh seeking to injure her irreparably.

He didn't know he had tears in his eyes until he turned on the unconscious four lying around on the floor and stunned them again.

"You fucking criminals! She had no defence, bastards! None!"

And Harry lifted Megan Delaney's head on his lap and began to sob. From a wardrobe Nick procured another blanket and threw it over her.

"Harry..."

"She is Jenny's twin sister. She was on another mission - "

Megan stirred awake. Not much of a wakefulness, Nick thought, but rather as if she just groggily emerged from a coma. Weak eyes turned on him, then like a small puppy she began to whimper, the sounds plaintive as she tried to move away from him.

"Megan, shhh, it's alright," Harry assured her, but she continued her whimpers, shrinking away from Nick's touch.

"No, Tom, please, don't..." she pleaded.

"Megan, I know this is going to be hard for you to believe, but I'm not Tom. We appear identical, but my name is Nick Locarno. I was on Voyager when it was destroyed."

He spoke calmly, moving his hand away from her face. If he didn't touch her at all, that might establish in her tortured mind that he meant her no harm.

"Nick Locarno?"

He could see she swallowed with difficulty but he had to speak with her first before she reached sick bay.

"Yes..."

"They killed Jenny. They say Tom Paris did it..."

"I know, Megan. But Megan, before we take you to sick bay, there's something I want to ask you."

"I don't know if I can help," she said as Harry stood up, holding her wrapped in the blanket closed against him.

"Trust me, you can. You and Jenny were both stellar cartographers..."

"Yes."

"We need for you to plot the quickest and safest route out of the Badlands, using the star charts I've downloaded..."

"You could do that?"

"Don't worry how I did it, okay? I'm going to pilot the Liberty through the plasma storms and two sectors, but I'm going to need your help here..."

"My life is finished, Nick. I'm dead. What good will it do?"

"You will help save the lives of many, Megan."

"And that man, Chakotay? The one who - "

Megan's eyes closed. They both knew what she had gone through at the hands of Chakotay. Nick wasn't sure about what they would do with him, and there he could only rely on the Captain's guidance on Chakotay's fate.

"Chakotay, I think, Megan, has his own demons to fight."

"It's not good enough, is it?"

"I guess not. But at the moment, Captain Janeway is with him and I am sure she is bargaining for our safety. We've disabled a few things on the ship, including these crazy bastards who have no honour in them as well as Tom Paris."

"Megan," said Harry, "you are safe now. We're getting you to sick bay now, and after that we're in Tom's quarters, okay? I've changed the locks there, so to speak, and they think Tom is still in his cabin."

Megan nodded mutely.

"I'll do whatever I can to help..."

Nick tapped the Maquis communicator pin.

"Locarno to the doctor."

"What can I do for you?"

"Prepare to transport Megan Delaney to the medical bay. Heal her body, Doc."

"Will do."

The next second Megan dematerialised from Harry's arms. Nick almost wanted to laugh at Harry's comical expression.

"She is in a bad way..."

"I know. But she is a Starfleet officer, Harry. She'll help as she promised."

"We have to get away from here. Are we taking over the ship?"

"Nope."

Then he calmly took an instrument that had been lying on a dresser in the corner, studied it for a second before saying, "How dumb can they get?"

Without so much as blinking an eyelid, Nick punched in coordinates into the site to site transporter.

"Nick, what the hell are you doing?"

"Doing some transport business," he replied as one by one, he transported Ayala, Gerron, Dregor and Dalby out of the cabin."

"Where have you sent them?" Harry asked, aghast.

Nick, a little irritated by Harry's greenness, pulled him by the collar to the small viewport. There was nothing they could see, except the moving mass of the plasma turbulence which looked like sick green-pink-yellow pus.

"There... See there those little blips there?"

"But - but..."

"But nothing, Harry. They're in cloud cuckooland."

***********

TBC


	15. Chapter 15

* * *

"I have to go," Chakotay said, as he stood near the doors of his quarters, looking very reluctant to move.

He looked better than she had seen him the first two days with fury written all over his face. Now, much of that fury was tempered. He had complained of headaches which he told her was uncommon for him because he never suffered headaches in his life. When he had been at his most exposed, and memories he sensed he had to have but which eluded him like a flitting butterfly, he had literally bled, a green-yellow pus that oozed from his mouth. Was his body in the process of expelling toxins - brought on by intensive self-scrutiny and manifesting itself in such a literal way?

She wondered absently if that would intensify once his memories were fully integrated, that the evils he committed, his heinous deeds would seep from him like a festered wound that would, after being cleaned, start its healing process. Indeed, she thought, the bleeding itself would be the process of healing.

But, the only place it could be effected was the Science Academy on Vulcan. Chakotay had expressed a desire, a heartfelt one, to have his life back. She was a part of that life. How much of a part, he would to learn only once his memories were given back to him. The memories Owen Paris stole from him because he hated Chakotay and hated her for reminding him he was a villain, a demonic creature with no redeeming features.

Naturally, she understood that he had to be on the bridge. He had complained about being unable to hail Paris, but left it at that. Then he thought that Ayala and Gerron were late reporting for duty. But the sudden onset of dizziness, of the headaches that seemed to plague him since he made love to her, diverted his attention somewhat.

"Anything I can do to help around the ship?" she asked.

"I can always use some help in engineering. We're heading for Alkorea and - "

They were going to auction off the survivors of Voyager. Her heart hammered. They had to stop the Liberty from reaching Alkorea. They had to get the Liberty out of the Badlands. They've been in the Badlands for three days now and it was three days too long. Jenny was dead, and who knew what her sister was suffering? The other Voyager survivors? What of Rollei and Nick Locarno? Harry Kim was so young…

"What?" she asked as she saw him frown.

"I don't know, Kathryn. It's - " Chakotay paused. When he stepped closer to her and placed his hands on her shoulders, there was a hint of a smile. "You're turning me into a good man. I don't want to be a good man, understand?"

But it was said without the fire, without the extreme, guttural strength and fury, without the cold-heartedness of before. His voice had softened, his eyes were a little warmer. She had hope.

"Chakotay, understand that now, more than ever before, a whole lot more people will be baying for your blood."

She was sorry she said it. But the words were out, impossible to retract. Yet it was true, so damnably true. The hardness reappeared. For a moment she thought he would throttle her.

"I'll deal with them," he said in measured tones. "I'll deal with them…"

Then he hurried out of the cabin to the bridge. Kathryn stood quite still for several minutes, realising he never told her where engineering was. The codes to his console were encrypted. At least she knew her way to the sick bay. She could get directions from there. The replicators were also unavailable to everyone on board except Chakotay, Paris and Dalby who had access. She sighed. He had replicated food for them and some extra clothing for her, but otherwise she didn't think he trusted her or any of her crew enough to allow them access. She could understand. Why, the first things they'd replicate would be phasers.

But sickbay beckoned first. She had to consult with Tuvok and the doctor about their escape from the Badlands. A Vulcan science vessel was patrolling the northern zone outside the Badlands. She had given them six days after which they had to return to Vulcan and presume that the crew of Voyager had perished or been taken prisoner.

If they were gone…

Kathryn's heart hammered in her throat. After Vulcan, after the MRT transfer had been made… Then she had to find Phoebe.

She took no pleasure in the fact that Owen Paris fathered her. Her mother had been killed by him, not by his direct hand, but by his order. That was as bad as having given her the poison himself. She had been distraught and had openly blamed him, an act for which Tom Paris hated her to this day. That wasn't all. Tom believed her mother had seduced his father and that as soon as she herself hit puberty, she was just like her mother, seducing a much older man, his father, and making his mother the most miserable of people.

Tom had other demons to fight. His father was a paedophile. Tom was a victim. Had been one since he was very small. Her own mother had enlightened her about Owen's depravities, had threatened to expose him. Elizabeth Paris, understandably distraught and knowing of her husband's practices which included, not surprisingly, letting her know of his exploits, killed herself. She was an unhappy woman who, by the time she died, was also unloved by both husband and son. Owen, because he had no love to give and Tom, most probably because he believed his mother should have done more to protect her little boy. And so she took not only herself but Tom's sister to a place where her terrorised heart and restless soul could find peace.

Gretchen Janeway, married to Edward hardly a month, was raped by Owen Paris because he thought he could spoil her for other men. Her father had raised her as his own daughter. She had loved him desperately, had clung to him whenever he returned from a mission. And Edward, knowing what happened to his wife, helpless against a demonic man like Owen Paris, loved his little girl unconditionally. Was that a mistake Edward Janeway made? Loving her more than he did Phoebe who _was_ his own child? She always felt he overcompensated, displaying affection more towards her than Phoebe, because of the way her mother was treated. And Phoebe, unable and too young to articulate such unequal affection, began to hate her from an early age. No, much as she would have loved it, she never had a good relationship with her sister.

Then suddenly, the missions became more and more dangerous with a high element of risk. Edward Janeway died. It left them orphans with only Alan Johnson, Mark's father to protect them and protect their interests.

Phoebe bore her a grudge  - even to this day.

And, even as she moved through the ship on her way to sick bay, she couldn't get Phoebe out of her mind. Phoebe who conspired with Owen Paris to destroy her and destroy Chakotay.

Phoebe had to be found after Chakotay's memory had been restored. Alone she couldn't face Phoebe, but, with Chakotay…

Who knows?

Kathryn reached the sick bay without being accosted by any of Chakotay's crew. Her heart had been in her throat and she had wondered whether he did it deliberately, letting her walk the corridors after he had insisted she would come to no harm.

When she stepped inside, her eyes flew to the biobed. For a moment she thought it was Jenny Delaney, but Jenny was dead. This young woman was Megan, Megan whom she hadn't seen yet but who had been whored on the ship. Chakotay started it and his men finished the victims off. Those who survived suffered further ignominy and degradation by becoming slaves.

Her eyes stung, her ears buzzed. How was Chakotay going to atone for all of this? How?

Megan lay with her eyes open, still a little weak. The doctor had finished his treatment and was looking at her as if he expected her to think the victim was Jenny. Kathryn moved so that she stood next to Megan.

"I am Captain Kathryn Janeway…" she said softly, touching Megan's hand. The hand remained limp. Megan showed little reaction. Only her eyes seemed to have life in them.

"You…were…hurt too…?" she asked slowly.

Kathryn nodded. It was going to be harder than she thought, forgiving Chakotay. It was easier said than done, the act of forgiveness. One had to strip oneself of oneself and become humble so that one's heart was open to gift the perpetrator with absolution.

Not from her own experience at Chakotay's hand, but having seen Harry, having seen Tuvok, and now, seeing Megan Delaney, subject of inhumane behaviour.

Yes, she thought. Forgiveness required a heart bigger than the universe. If _she_ weren't certain how big her own heart could become, what about the Harry Kims, the Megan Delaneys, all other men and women who had been ravaged by the Maquis before sold into slavery? What about them? What about lingering hatred for the man who spearheaded all those crimes?

Kathryn sighed.

Yes, she had been hurt too. Perhaps more than any of them…

"Then I am not alone," Megan said softly.

"I understand, Megan. Jenny spoke very highly of you. You are a stellar cartographer as well. Is that right?"

Megan nodded.

"He - " she began, turning her head in the direction of the bed right at the end. "He killed my sister…"

"Nick?"

"No, Captain. That is Tom Paris lying there," the doctor said.

"It would appear that Lieutenant Locarno has done him some harm, Captain," Tuvok said, his left eyebrow arching high.

"Nick Locarno? He escaped?"

"Captain," said Krell, "Nick calmly walked out here, rescued Harry, beat Paris to a…pulp, brought this fiend, the one who now lies over there, into sickbay and then they left again, to rescue Megan."

"Nick…is different, Captain Janeway. He is a good man…"

For the first time Kathryn found something to smile about.

"He is, Megan."

"Nick wants me to help you…escape…"

Kathryn's heart pounded, her eyes grew wide, then filled with understanding.

"Megan, you're a member of my crew as of this moment. How soon can you start? We have less than twenty four hours."

"Just as soon as Doctor decides I'm fit enough to get up, Captain Janeway. Which is about now."

Megan lifted herself to a sitting position. Then suddenly she hurled herself into Kathryn's arms. Kathryn stroked her long, blonde hair.

"Thank you, Captain Janeway. I'll do my best…"

Kathryn released her gently, nodded to the doctor.

"Nick and Harry are getting the others, Captain, as well as a few prisoners not of Voyager, but other Federation vessels."

Kathryn smiled, walking to Tom Paris's bed.

"Wake him, Doctor."

"Captain, he is still – "

Krell sighed when she glared at him and did was he was ordered. Seconds later Tom groaned awake. His eyes connected with hers. A smirk marked his attractive features.

"Bet you thought I was Nick, you bitch in heat. Chakotay said you tasted real good."

"But you're not Nick, and Chakotay has given me full immunity," she said, ignoring his taunt. "Touch me, Tom Paris, and you will regret it."

"So, my father's bitch, just like your mother was. Did you like fucking him, Janeway?"

"Paris!" It was the doctor's voice. Krell approached him. "Right now, Paris, you are helpless. None of your friends are here to back you up. If my guess is correct, your less faint-hearted sibling transported them into the plasma turbulence. I wouldn't put it past him, anyway, judging by the way Megan looked when she was transported here. Now, since you're not so strong, how much poison should I pump into your system?"

He looked threatening with the hypospray which they never noticed he had filled with something.

Kathryn stared a little dumbfounded at the doctor. He had never before displayed such an outburst. But his outrage mirrored every other human - a defenceless girl was gang-raped repeatedly over days. It was enough that Nick would... She sighed. Would Nick?

Tom backed down, looked momentarily contrite. She hardened her heart.

"I don't expect sympathy," he said.

"You'll get none."

"Kill me, then. I – I can't go home, you know."

"I know, Tom."

"She should have taken me with her."

"Your mother?"

"Yes."

After a long, uneasy silence, Kathryn spoke.

"Tom, she may have wanted to take you too."

"What?"

"But…"

She sighed, wondering if she should tell him. Then, deciding to take the plunge, drawing her courage from having at least Chakotay on her side, she thought it was something he had to know.

"She wanted to, Tom. But your father got wind of her decision. He knew, yet he allowed her to kill herself and…" Why was it so difficult? Why was it so hard to find a grain of compassion for Owen Paris, the man who fathered them?

"And, Captain?"

She was no longer a bitch in heat. It lifted her spirits somewhat at the subtle change in his attitude.

"He taunted her while she and your sister lay dying. He could have saved her. Instead, he held you up and said you're his little boy. He needed you...for him…"

"Let me die...please..."

************

TBC


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers are once again warned of the explicit nature of certain sexual situations. Pleased be warned that if you are squeamish reading about a twisted Chakotay or other equally debauched practices, that you rather skip this story.

* * *

The only thing Torres could think of was that Chakotay, sitting with his back to her piloting the Liberty, was going to fuck Janeway again later in the day or tonight. She wished he'd sell her off to the highest bidder at the Alkorea trading post. She couldn't stand the woman who only had to look innocent and Chakotay was into her pussy.

Selling their used wares on the slave market was the highlight of their rendezvous with Alkorea. There, the winner would test his wares by fucking her in public, before a large gathering. If he weren't satisfied, he'd let a male family member or fellow trader rape the woman until her core warmed up. After she was declared ready and wet and warm, the trader who put in the highest bid got to fuck her again.

Only then he'd declare her fit for use in his home. He'd pull the naked girl up, point to the crowd and declare that he's satisfied.

Yeah, she thought, that should be Janeway's fate. The woman was making Chakotay soft in the head. Already he didn't care what the hell Paris or Ayala, Dalby and Gerron were up to. She had been there when they raped Jenny, most of the time simply rotating their turns three at a time until almost all the males had a go. Jenny had been good the first time with Chakotay, with her pussy throbbing and weeping, her own fingers probing deep into her cunt to find the warmth and moistness until Jenny relented and began lubricating her fingers. But Chakotay had his cock up Jenny's ass and Dalby worked into her mouth. The woman orgasmed twice that first time. Wasn't it strange? Torres thought. There they were, being violated and still cumming. Some women were just hot.

After that Chakotay threw her out and the crew got her. The girl had been terrified, but slowly accepted it wasn't going to change so she participated, never fighting or resisting. She had lain with Jenny early one evening, eating cunt like there was no tomorrow and the girl spilled all over her, she tasted so good. Moved away the folds like a clam's flesh, found her smart spot, tickled and nibbled her clit which, within only two days, had swollen two twice its size and Jenny was gone, her legs spread wide and Torres's mouth in her pussy while Ayala, Gerron and her Dickson were watching. Jenny gasped, swooned with delight as Torres's tongue got deep into her, her palms clamped tightly around Jenny's tits. The woman was something. Pity she died.

She objected to the Holodeck Experience. She always thought Chakotay had no morals, that there were never boundaries within his universe. But he had a thing against what some individuals got up to. Chakotay was unaware of Paris and the others' doings in the holodeck. It was why they didn't indulge in it often.

Tom, not usually into women, fucked her solidly for two hours remaining erect for a long period. And then Ayala jumped, and then Gerron, Dalby, Bendera, back to Tom. She scratched, tore at him, everything she could muster. They just laughed. It was useless to fight. And then Tom started beating her - ploughing into her like she was a strong man, and only when she lay completely still, did he stop.

"That ought to teach you, bitch in heat!"

It was not the first time Tom called a woman a bitch in heat.

Now Chakotay was becoming less of the animal. They should get Janeway that way too. The man was slipping, she thought. He looked different today, less like a hunter and more like a lover. In a few minutes Seska would come to replace her and then she'd hunt Janeway down and show her pussy. If she could get Paris and Ayala into the deal... But Ayala and his bunch were busy with Megan, another one that liked their dicks up every hole.

She watched the Boss. Only last week he said he had to get to Alkorea to sell Megan and the others they captured a few weeks ago, including her own lover boy, Dickson. She hadn't wanted to let Dickson go, but Chakotay had been adamant: they needed supplies. Suddenly he didn't seem to be in such a hurry and he appeared to be lost in thought. Tough for a guy who was never lost in thought. He acted only on the way his body reacted whenever a woman was brought to his cabin. She wanted to tell him they could sell Janeway, but the way he struck her across the face with his belt and then chased her out of his cabin... She didn't think she could stand getting beaten up by Chakotay. Yeah, she wanted him; she could service him much better than Janeway; she knew what made Chakotay tick.

Or did she?

Did he even feel like trading this time? What the hell was wrong with him? She liked her own lover boy toy mainly because he could service her as long as he could and whenever she wanted it. If she couldn't get Chakotay, Dickson was good enough. But that was all he was: her lover toy. No feelings existed between them, no emotions except what transpired through sex when they're were high into their orgasms.

She was a Klingon. Her appetite was insatiable. Most of the time she wanted to sleep feeling a hard dick lodged in her cunny. She wanted to feel movement even as she fell asleep, just the slow sliding in and out of a stiff cock up her cunt, expanding her walls, the tip of the cock bouncing off her cervix. She liked it. Correction. She relished the feel of it. She had few qualms about decency. It was the next best thing- dreaming it was Chakotay doing her in her sleep. But as things went, Dickson serviced her well enough.

Her mouth curved into a smile. She had pumped Dickson's balls full of chemicals to make his crotch grow bigger. That was before Megan had been captured. Dickson's dick grew within hours to almost twice its size at erection. She had been wild with pleasure as he unfolded his cock for her after pulling down the tight, close fitting hot pants she had instructed he wear all the time. He had balked at first at the tightness, but relented when she threatened to bring in the men.

"That way when I come in here, I am ready when I see your thick bulge. My pussy must be wet when I just look at you, okay?"

"Very well, sweetheart," he responded, cupping his crotch with one hand, testing the fullness, the blatant cockiness of his brand new monster dick.

"Let me see," she ordered.

Dickson peeled the tight top band down over his hips, actually struggling to get it down. He had, when she entered, already become erect. She hadn't beaten him senseless for nothing the first few days when they gave him to her to play with. He could stand ramrod stiff on order these days. Now, his cock, heavy, its veins jutting, the ridges visible, sprang free. It was huge, monster like and she instantly palpitated and drooled just seeing the enormous shaft bouncing. She knelt before him, giant tip almost too big for her mouth. But she had practiced like a damned snake to dislodge her jaw before slowly licking all around the heated tip.

"That feels very good, milady," she heard Dickson's gruff voice. "Very good."

She pushed forward into him, allowing her mouth to adjust to his thickness. There was a blinding flash of pleasure as her pussy started to spill her juices, throbbing like mad with greed. She wanted him right there.

"Sit down, Dicky boy," she ordered and he sat down on the edge of the bed, his knees spread and his extra long shaft ready for her. "Here," she said as soon as he was seated and stood between his legs, then raised herself so that she perched on his thighs, bringing her pussy in line with his face. "Taste my pussy first..."

He grabbed her butt, and she gasped when his mouth, hot and moist, began to lick her, nibbling her folds, exposing her clit, her pink, strong clit that seemed to want his teeth biting through it. Then he covered her whole area - wet, dripping folds, inner flesh, clit and clit sheath. She exploded right there as she enjoyed her soft orgasm they way Dickson sucked, his fingers finding their way into her butt crack, prodding and prodding until they found her anus. He moaned with pleasure as she pushed into his mouth, and she roared as his fingers found her anal depths, rocking until she was satisfied.

When they both paused to take a breath, she straddled him, her pussy, now slick and dripping wet, found his great tip and she slowly pushed  into him. She groaned, her walls surprisingly too tight now for him. But she was Klingon.

"Now, you great fuck, do it!" she screamed at him.

The next second Dickson grabbed her ass cheeks and pushed her into him, painful as it was. For a moment her heart stopped beating, but her cunt sheath did wonders as it expanded to accommodate him. He pushed harder and slowly but surely, she slid down on to his cock until he filled her to the hilt.

She had been dizzy with delight as she moved on him, feeling the ridges graze her inside, his tip nudging her cervix. She had thrown her head back and fucked Dickson, all the time hoping it was Chakotay...

She knew how to pleasure herself when Chakotay played hardball.

Her complaint to Tom didn't wash. The man liked to taunt her. Now she wanted to get Janeway somehow and let the men at her. That should put Chakotay's nose out of joint, she thought as she fiddled with her controls at her workstation. Dickson was waiting for her and she could enlist his monster cock to drive all the way up Janeway's cunt. Waste her like they wasted other women.

Yeah. Waste her.

"What the hell is that?" she heard Chakotay say as he peered out the viewscreen into the turbulence.

"What? I don't see anything, Chief," Lon Suder said. She was instantly on her guard, trying to see what Chakotay was looking at.

"There!" he barked, irritated at them. "Those specks there in the plasma cloud! Can't you see?"

B'Elanna peered, searched the cloud for anomalies, then did a scan of the cloud.

"Four life signs, Boss. But I guess if they're there, they're dead."

"Torres!"

"Yes!"

"The site to site transporters were your responsibility!"

"According to the scan, they are Dalby, Ayala, Gerron and - "

"I know the hell who they are! How the fuck did they get there?"

"Don't know, Chakotay," she said, suddenly afraid of the implications.

She couldn't think who might have done it, but one thing was certain: there must be a mutiny in progress...

"A mutiny..." Chakotay whispered, echoing her thoughts.

"Where is Janeway, Chakotay?" she asked, wanting to bring Janeway's name to the fore the moment he wanted to blame someone and take action on anyone responsible.

"In Engineering, I guess."

"You _guess_?"

Chakotay swung round to face her.

"She wouldn't..." he said, his eyes suddenly growing wide, glazing over.

It seemed his eyes popped, becoming stark. From his ears began oozing a strange grey pus. Groaning, Chakotay clutched at his stomach, then his head. It looked like he had an almighty headache.

"Boss, something's wrong."

"I know. But it's not Kathryn. I can see...her...  She has been in the same place all the time. I can see...her..." he repeated.

"How is that possible? You're not a telepath. How do you know that?"

"She is in sickbay..." he managed, his voice trailing, the words slurred as he began pitching forward.

"Chakotay!"

To her horror, Chakotay merely looked at her before collapsing in a heap on the floor.

************

TBC

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers are once again warned of the explicit nature of certain sexual situations. Pleased be warned that if you are squeamish reading about a twisted Chakotay or other equally debauched practices, that you rather skip this story.

* * *

Kathryn felt a shiver run down her spine. Tom had just begged her to let him die and on the point of telling him that she couldn't let her brother die, her body stilled before it was hit by a violent shudder. She turned abruptly to the doctor, who frowned when he saw her expression.

"Is something the matter, Captain?"

A flash, an image and a stinging pain at the base of her skull was enough to indicate something was wrong and that it had to do with Chakotay. Right on the heels of that thought came a hail from the bridge.

"Suder to sickbay. Doctor, could you transport Captain Chakotay immediately to sickbay? He has collapsed."

"Chakotay..." Kathryn's soft whisper came, her own head bearing down towards her chest so heavy the pain was. Her vision blurred for a few maddening seconds and exercising superhuman effort, she managed to walk to the biobed. Megan Delaney was busy at another workstation in sickbay. She'd left the bed right after the doctor forbade her to get up, so the biobed was unoccupied.

A second later, Chakotay was lifted on the biobed and Krell instantly placed a cortical stimulator against his temple. He looked pale and again, a green-yellow substance oozed from the corner of his mouth. Not only that, it seeped slowly from his ears and nostrils too. His body was completely still and for a heart stopping second Kathryn thought he was dead.

After scanning Chakotay for synaptic activity, Krell frowned heavily. Kathryn's heart sank.

"Doctor, is he - ?"

"I'm afraid we may not have much time, Captain. Somehow there is a vacuum - small enough to be missed - in his memory centre, as if he had been..."

"Lobotomised?"

"I don't think so, Captain," Krell replied, working at wiping away the ooze from Chakotay's nostrils, mouth and ears. "It's more like Captain Chakotay is experiencing the loss of those memories triggered by his meeting with you, most likely. Although, as I have been led to understand, it is not something that would revert naturally to him... He is not an amnesiac in that sense."

"We may be too late..." she said, rubbing the back of her head. She closed her eyes, trying desperately to remain alert. "The procedure for the memory integration has been set up on Vulcan, Doctor. Believe me, if it could have been done here..."

"I understand, Captain. I'm keeping Captain Chakotay in this state and have arrested the flow of this ooze which I can only think must be toxins that have built up in his system since he entered the Badlands, how long ago?"

"Three years..."

"A long time for a man to sink into this world not engineered by him."

Krell gave her a meaningful look. Kathryn nodded.

"You can say that again, Doctor. That is the tragedy..." she whispered. "That is the tragedy..."

"Captain, if we can get out of here as soon as possible. You mentioned a Vulcan Science vessel waiting..."

Kathryn nodded, then  stepped forward and took Chakotay's hand in hers. She leaned over to plant a gentle kiss against his cheek. Her eyes stung with tears.

"I won't be long now...my love..." she whispered.

She had hardly straightened up when she was alerted to a commotion at the sick bay doors. She swung round, in time to see Torres and a Bajoran female rushing in, followed by two men, one who wore an unbelievably tight shorts and the other in Maquis gear looking like an animal.

"There! That's her!" Torres shouted, rushing forward at the same time and grabbing her, clamping fingers round her throat. Kathryn choked, experiencing several blinding flashes as Torres throttled her.

_I am going to die..._

She had seen B'Elanna before, had been subjected to her slow seduction, but this look of pure hatred unsettled her momentarily as the Klingon growled her wrath. Even dazed, Kathryn heard a scuffle at the other end of the sickbay and from the corner of her eye saw the Bajoran female slumping to the floor. Tuvok had the Maquis by the neck.

"Die, bitch in heat!" Torres screamed. Kathryn felt every breath being squeezed from her as Torres pulled her towards the sickbay doors. She couldn't breathe, the objects in sickbay taking on grotesque shapes. "Die!" Torres screamed again.

Kathryn knew she was going to pass out within seconds. She tried to prise B'Elanna's fingers from her throat, but the woman had a vice grip. She was much stronger than Kathryn.

Just then the Klingon released her. The action was so sudden that Kathryn stumbled. She took in deep gulps of air, coughing at the same time, her eyes stinging from the strain of having tried to fight the Klingon off.

But what happened next, would remain with her for the rest of her life. Tom Paris, still weak from his beating at the hands of Harry and Nick, got up from his bed, grabbed Torres by her dark brown hair and let fly with his fist. Kathryn heard a crack and knew Tom had just broken her jaw. Torres sank to her knees. She tried to get up, was too groggy to stand, staggering about. Again Torres lunged at Kathryn, but this time, released from the vice grip, she managed to side-step the enraged Klingon. She wanted to kill this woman, but old Federation ideals still guided her. Besides, she didn't have the heart. She pushed Torres away from her, noticing in her peripheral vision that the Bajoran, the tightly clad male and remaining animal-like Maquis were all lying unconscious on the floor.

Tom had meanwhile rushed to one of the cabinets, pressed a phial in a hypospray and reached for Torres, grabbing her mane of hair in his free hand. Torres looked aghast at him, trying to speak, the words a mumble because of her broken jaw. But Kathryn was certain she knew what Torres was saying.

"Paris! Whose side are you on?"

And she had a bewildered look as Tom pressed the hypospray with a soft hiss into her neck.

The injured woman stumbled towards Kathryn. Hands reached for her, long fingers that wanted to curl themselves round her neck and strangle her again. Then B'Elanna's eyes rolled, rolled right away from their sockets until only the whites were visible. Torres, stunned, clutched at her throat, uttered a guttural sound before keeling over backwards, her head hitting the floor first with a sickening thud. As if in a dream Kathryn watched this woman who for a brief period terrorised her.

Strange, she thought, how Torres' body lay sprawled, like a broken rag doll, her head, arms and legs at odd angles with no symmetry of shapes as if her life, bent out of shape, ended the same way in death.

Kathryn looked at the doctor who bent down and opened the medical tricorder. She knew the doctor didn't have to check that Torres was dead.

"She's dead," Krell pronounced.

"Tom?" Kathryn said his name as she moved slowly to him.

Tom just stood there, the hypospray hanging from limp fingers. Kathryn remembered absently how they told her Tom had killed Jenny Delaney in cold blood. B'Elanna Torres, Klingon, Maquis, in love with Chakotay, but having gone too far, was perhaps even more cold-bloodedly despatched than the unfortunate Jenny.

It was the same man who would never leave her alone in Federation space, who called her his Daddy's whore, called her mother names, who even as his father subjected him to his own brand of cruel, inhuman sexual practices, still thought of her as the villain who ruined his mother's life. How could she blame him? He wanted to die when Elizabeth and Rowena died, wanted to be taken with them to the only place where Owen Paris could never touch them again. Owen had diabolically paraded the boy Tom as his prize as his mother and sister lay dying. How could she blame him? Owen influenced him, kept him sleeping in his bed and sexually abused the defenceless child for years.

But Tom grew into a young man. The last time she had seen him had been when she had heard Tom threaten his father. She had been on her way to Owen's office and had stopped just outside. Tom had exited the office, rushed past without noticing her, his attractive face darkened by a thunderous cloud. Owen Paris had twisted Tom's mind as surely as he had purged Chakotay's memories.

The way Jenny was killed and now B'Elanna, Kathryn was certain that Tom wouldn't hesitate to kill his own father.

What Tom knew of her history with Chakotay he must have kept quiet about. They had been together in the Badlands for more than two years at least. Was it something Tom could use at a later point to his advantage? She and Chakotay had gone into seclusion years before that to get away from the negative influences of the Parises and other admirals who resented Chakotay's rise through the ranks, his absolute inherent sense of honour and his morals and later, his open censure of particularly Owen Paris's licentious living, his criminal behaviour and the terrible hold over his son who was forced to live as his father's boy lover for years.

Tom who must have known what his father had done to Chakotay. But Chakotay had gone bad instantly after the rape of his memory, for she believed all manner of evil had been supplanted in him by Owen Paris. It was that Chakotay she had come to hate, for the last time she had seen him in Federation space, he hadn't recognised her, and he was already known to have violated several women, and killed one or two Starfleet officers.

Now, Tom Paris who hated her stood before her and her eyes fell upon his face, a face different from the old anger, the atrocities he committed, the old hatred he had for her.

"Captain... Torres would never have rested. She wanted me to kill you. I - "

"What, Tom?"

"Told her straight off Chakotay wasn't for her. Chakotay doesn't know that he knows you, Captain. Torres sensed he was lost to her from the moment he saw you, down there in the cargo bay. That's when her scheming started. She wouldn't have rested," he repeated his words. 'Besides..."

His mouth moved into a glimmer of a quirk, one that was spent the moment Megan moved into his field of vision. He gave a sigh. Kathryn knew that they all had a lot to answer for, that forgiveness was going to be the rarest of all gifts. But she was dying to know what Tom was going to say anyway. So she coaxed him, tried to get the quirky smile back.

"Besides?"

"You're my sister..."

And she had never seen Tom look more grave or remorseful than when he claimed her as his kin at last.

************ 

TBC


	18. Chapter 18

* * *

Kathryn stood on the bridge of the Liberty. There had been no time to make an indepth study of the ship's specs, but Nick Locarno and Harry Kim had been one ahead of her. Lieutenant-Commander Rollei, finally pronounced fit working in engineering, becoming acquainted with the workings of the Liberty while Lon Suder, the Maquis - a Betazoid - sat at the Security panel and Nick Locarno manned the conn. Megan had decided to remain in sick bay, helping the doctor with the rest of the Voyager survivors who had been brought to sick bay by Nick and Harry.

"We've locked the rest of the Liberty crew in their cabins, Captain," Nick told her, beaming. She learned that they had overrode the codes of all the crew cabins on the ship with none of the crew able to exit their cabins. Then they had set about freeing Voyager's remaining three crew and a few other prisoners still on the Liberty. Ones who needed medical treatment were transported to sickbay and others placed in cabins where they now had access to replicators.

She felt very proud. Nick was a personal reclamation project and he had not disappointed her. It was the doctor who had confirmed to her Nick's connection, though it was always one she had suspected. Nick, though no doubt knowing of this bond between them, never used it against her or as a way to escape prison. Kathryn had gone to New Zealand because she believed he was the best pilot to take Voyager into the Badlands. She sighed. His mother, brilliant Starfleet doctor, had been just another of Owen Paris's victims.

Tom had warmed her heart when he called her his sister and she wondered if he knew that Nick was also a sibling. Tom was still wracked by guilt over his deeds, his treatment of her, over Jenny's death, but he had had no compunction it seemed, when he felled B'Elanna Torres. The three - one of whom had been Torres's prisoner, had been treated by the doctor and then locked in their cabins.

It was Dickson, the tight-clad prisoner who had begged them to take him with them, wherever they were going.

"I am Lieutenant Eldred Dickson, Captain Janeway, of the starship Audensberg. Please, I would like to see my family again..."

She had nodded, then asked him if he would like to crew.

"If I can get into something more comfortable," he said.

"My cabin," replied Tom, "you can go there. Replicate something."

Eldred looked pleased, and wanted to grab Tom's hand, but Megan had already touched Tom's arm. She nodded to Dickson that he could leave, and he had given her a grateful look. Tom turned to face Megan. There was an uneasy silence for a few moments, with Tom looking ashamed.

"Look, I know this is not going to help much, but - but if it means anything, I - "

Tom's face turned red; he looked flustered, looked away from Megan, then turned to her again.

"Tom," she said, "my sister is dead. I mourn her passing now, because I wasn't allowed to mourn her two days ago..."

Megan let her words trail. Kathryn knew, as she thought Tom knew too, that she was referring to her treatment and gang rape, while they told her that they killed her sister. No one was going to come out of all this unscathed. Already Rollei felt guilty that he had been in sickbay critically injured and survived the rapes and torture.

"I am sorry, Megan."

"No more than I am, Tom," Megan said quietly. "I lost a soul mate in my sister."

Unable to hide her distress, Megan turned away from Tom, who appeared for a moment steely hard, until the distraught look was back in his face. Kathryn touched his arm.

"We have to get Chakotay out of here, Tom. I think you know why. This isn't my vessel, but you've lost some key crew, others are locked in their cabins, and if we're to take the Liberty out of here to rendezvous with the Vulcan vessel, I'm going to need some help. It's your choice if you want to remain. The Maquis will be given the choice to leave the Liberty and transport to other Maquis vessels."

"Captain, I - I don't know what to say," he responded, the gloom lifting fleetingly from his blue eyes.

"You can start by calling me Kathryn. I am your sister, you know."

"But as long as I'm under your command here, you are Captain Janeway."

"Tom..."

"No debate, Captain."

"Fine. I'm going to need someone down in engineering. I understand Torres was quite a brilliant engineer and so  is Seska, but I don't want Seska anywhere near a console that she can hack into."

Her words struck a chord with him. They had just removed Torres's body from sickbay and would eject her into the first sun once they were out of the Badlands.

"If you're wondering, Captain, I don't think the Boss will miss her. Maybe her skills she brought to the table, but no, he won't miss her."

She didn't want to tell Tom that Chakotay thought nothing of striking Torres with his belt and ordering her to leave his cabin. Torres had been present whenever Chakotay... Kathryn shuddered. The road ahead for them all was very long and very hard. To his eternal credit Chakotay had her alone in his cabin and after that first time, he had been good to her and good with her. It was that, in fact, that had triggered the awareness that something was gone, taken forcibly from him.

"No. I don't think he'll miss her. Nick and Harry ejected some of his key men as well. We're crew, Tom. On a rogue ship called the Liberty."

Tom had nodded, and finally made his way to engineering, to join Tuvok, her security officer.

Minutes later she had been hailed by him.

"There's no one here, Captain. I think you should get Suder down here. He's currently on the bridge. He's the next best after Torres, Dalby, Seska and Ayala. He - "

"What, Tom?"

"Never participated in any of...what happened here on the ship. Talk to him, will you?"

"I'll do that. I hope he'll accept my command."

"And Captain?"

"Yes?"

"Tell Megan she's doing a great job plotting a star chart."

"Will do. Janeway out."

Kathryn stood next to the biobed. Chakotay looked rested, although still in a comatose state. All the anger seemed to have evaporated from his face. He looked younger, less pale than when he'd been  transported to sickbay. The oozing pus had halted, but would start seeping again once he was awakened to begin the procedure.

Brought for the moment to the present again, Janeway stared out the viewscreen and silently thanked Megan Delaney for the work she had done in such dire circumstances. She had heard from the young cartographer that Jenny had always worked with her, and together they had formed a formidable combination of charting space. Now, Kathryn was glad that Megan was part of the crew and any future vessel assigned to her. She was glad that the girl had been so precise and intuitive. In an area of space familiar mostly to the Maquis who dwelled there, Megan had found those narrow passages were there was less plasma turbulence, and apart from the occasional shudder of the vessel, gave Nick a much better chance of matching his speed and coordinates against the information Megan had furnished.

It was data Kathryn was going to keep classified, in case of any unforeseen emergency dash back into the Badlands. The route was remarkably free of other roaming Maquis ships and shuttles. The Limpet, Liberty's small five-seater shuttle, would also join the Neruk, the Vulcan vessel waiting for them. It was still not possible to open a hail to that vessel because of static interference, and she hoped fervently that they would have a successful rendezvous.

An hour ago they had been met by two Maquis vessels and had transported the Maquis who had wanted to leave the Liberty. She gave a mental shrug. They would probably continue their repulsive and depraved practices, but now, with the head of their state gone, she hoped seriously that it would lessen dramatically. That was the impression she got, based on the changing attitude of Tom Paris and seven of the Maquis who had elected to remain on the Liberty.

Tom had wanted to have nothing to do with his old life anymore and considered her as his senior officer, so the most senior after Tom on the Liberty was Suder, who was taking the Liberty back the same route they were travelling. He'd keep the ship free of prisoners and other Maquis and would wait for them to return.

She had had her conversation with him as Tom had suggested.

Suder had the blackest, most disarming eyes that were even more disarming because they contrasted so much with his pale skin and eye sockets.

When she had asked him to Chakotay's small office, leaving Nick at the helm, and Tuvok at his station, he had immediately stood on attention.

"Captain Janeway. My name is Lon Suder," he said in quiet, reserved tones.

She liked him immediately.

"At ease, Mr Suder," she commanded, her words bringing a smile to his face.

"Forgive me, Captain. I have never been called Mr Suder..."

"Well, get used to it. You have indicated a desire to remain on the Liberty and under my command."

"Thank you, Captain."

A small silence ensued. She gave a little cough.

"I...understand from Tom Paris that you and the others who have decided to remain never participated in - in the..."  She could feel the blush spreading, her face warm. Suder, like everyone, knew of her own treatment. Under threat of death they had remained quiet. He was a Betazoid who could read her emotions and he must have known what she felt. Yet he remained calm, almost impassive.

"It is against my beliefs, Captain. But even if I didn't have those beliefs to guide my behaviour, such atrocities and participation in them were reprehensible to me. Sometimes we have managed to speak to victims who expressed hatred, others who have accepted their fate, and many who had hope that their new master would treat them with greater compassion. I have not had trouble myself screening out unwanted emotions from especially the perpetrators, although Captain Chakotay is a different matter."

"Captain Chakotay's memories will be reintegrated. I am sure reparation would be high on his list."

"I know, Captain Janeway. When you came on board, I sensed immediately a change in Captain Chakotay's emotions, even before he met you. He became more preoccupied, and once when he invited me to dine with him in the mess hall, he had been at pains to explain that he would give you no mercy. But - "

"But?"

"His emotions were all the opposite of what he was saying. I'm a Betazoid. Captain Chakotay must have invited me to his table by some unspoken desire. Even then he had been unable to define the ambivalence in him and it confused him, though no one else suspected."

Kathryn thought how Tuvok said pretty much a similar thing, and Tuvok was a touch telepath.

"I can tell you, Mr Suder, that what you're saying is true. His meeting me has caused a major emotional shift in his equilibrium."

"Then I am glad, Captain Janeway, to be serving under you and Captain Chakotay - "

"But Chakotay has committed foul deeds. He is accountable."

"I know. But this too I sensed that day in the mess hall, that somewhere - somewhere..."

Suder's eyes looked like they changed colour from black to a blue-black - they gleamed warmly and not, as she feared for a fleeting second, dangerous.

"Somewhere?" she prodded gently.

"He had a past in which he must have had someone - a loving woman whom he loved. Everyone knew him as man who couldn't love anyone. He was cold, distant, enigmatic, loveless, never encouraging anyone to come too close or to be tender at all. Since your arrival, that changed, even before he set eyes on you. That was what I sensed. The capacity for loving lay closer to the surface than he had been willing to acknowledge."

There was a long pause in which she thought he'd finished. She was just about to dismiss him.

"I think there's more, isn't it, Mr Suder?"

"Perhaps, Captain, you should go to his cabin and look through his personal effects. I think there is something that might be of importance to you."

Back in the present, Kathryn thought of her conversation with Suder and smiled to herself. Fingers crept upwards to her neck and her eyes closed, burning with unshed tears.

She had gone to Chakotay's cabin, searched through his things and found it.

*********** 

TBC


	19. Chapter 19

* * *

The next day Kathryn and the Voyager survivors along with Lieutenant Eldred Dickson transported from the Liberty to the Neruk. Chakotay and Doctor Krell had been transported first. Tom had been cleared to dock the Limpet in one of the Neruk's shuttle bays.

The Liberty, with Lon Suder in command, returned immediately to the Badlands. They would patrol the route for the next few weeks. Kathryn had no idea how long they themselves would be away, but she knew that they might have to return to the Badlands should things take a turn for the worse. Chakotay was a wanted in the Federation; he was despised in the Badlands. Once his memories were restored, they would effectively be on the run again.

The new arrivals had all been assigned to quarters by very impassive looking Vulcan officers, but Tuvok was there to ease their transition to a wholly Vulcan environment. They were still shell-shocked, heavy with memories of their traumatic experiences.

She, Tuvok and Doctor Krell were in the medical bay of the Neruk, where Chakotay lay as still as he had been the entire journey. She had met with Captain T'Krot who had been ultra reserved.

"Commander Tuvok is to be commended for the part he played in rescuing  Captain Chakotay," he said.

"Captain, if it weren't for him, I would never have come this far. I owe him everything."

T'Krot nodded severely.

"Only upon Commander Tuvok's recommendations did we concur that the procedure to help Captain Chakotay restore his life would be the correct thing to do. A man who had been deprived of his very existence, deserves freedom. It is indeed a great honour, Captain Janeway."

"Thank you, Captain T'Krot. We are indebted to you. To Vulcan."

She felt light-headed with relief that they had made it safely out of the Badlands to rendezvous with the Neruk without being detected. Like the Klingon birds of prey, but not to the extent the Klingons have perfected their technology, the Neruk had cloaking capabilities but only under certain circumstances. It was not cloaked at present and was cruising at approximately warp seven. They would reach Vulcan only in two days, but it gave her enough time to mull over what she had found in Chakotay's cabin, and arrange for the rest of her crew, as well as Eldred Dickson to return home first. Harry surprisingly, had elected to stay and was going to travel with Tom in the Limpet once they left Vulcan. She had shaken her head when Tom said there was some unfinished business he had to attend to.

She too, had to prepare a full report on the total destruction of her vessel in which she lost one hundred and thirty members of her crew. On the Liberty there had been little time to absorb fully the loss of her ship and death of her crew. The trauma would hit her and it would hit at unexpected times, she knew. But Starfleet had to know that there were survivors. Kathryn sighed. How was she going to explain Chakotay?

On Tuvok's recommendation - a mere confirmation of her own thoughts on it - the best course of action would be that they never captured Chakotay at all. Given the nature of Voyager's disappearance and the explosion, such a scenario seemed plausible. Starfleet could send in experts to scan the area of the explosion and they could very possibly determine that many lives were lost.

How else could ten have survived then? That thought had given her headaches and the only conclusion she could come to was that Chakotay transported them not just because he wanted to use a few survivors for trading, but for the very reason he was lying in the medical bay of the Neruk. A deep, hidden power of which he was unaware impelled him to do what he had done.

Kathryn shook her head. If that were true, then was it her presence on Voyager that saved the lives of the other nine?

It was hard to swallow. Too hard. What happened on the Liberty would haunt her and haunt all the others for the rest of their lives. No matter how much Chakotay changed towards her, no matter what the hidden dimension of his life before the Badlands had been, she was going to remember the way a strip of leather tore her skin to pieces. It was something she would live with for always, just as Megan and Harry, Tuvok even, as well as the three other survivors and Eldred Dickson would have to live with their traumas for the rest of their lives. A whole lot of loving, spiritual support and counselling was going to be needed to help in the healing process.

And what of Tom? Nick Locarno? Nick hardly spoke about it, but his stay in the New Zealand penal colony had been no picnic.

She had refused to leave Chakotay's side, much to the annoyance of the doctor who had insisted that she should rest too. The procedure was going to be life threatening, but it was a risk worth taking, saving Chakotay's life.

Her hand crept to her neck, felt for the chain and locket. She closed her eyes. Remembered.

"Yours, Chakotay, to remember," she had told him that day and his eyes had been full of laughter, creasing as he smiled.

"Honey, I have everything a man could ever want. You didn't have to give me this, you know."

"Nonsense, every good man should wear one. Open it," she had commanded, her voice teasing.

Chakotay had opened the locket, stood quite mute for the longest time. Then he looked at her.

"I love you, Kathryn."

She had hugged him fiercely. It had been his birthday that day and she couldn't think of anything else to give him.

Now her fingers curled around the body of the locket. How had he managed to keep it? Had he worn it when they had done the procedure on him? Did Owen Paris even know that he was wearing it?

She sighed. Chakotay, in his new guise with his altered perceptions, could obviously not make any connection since there was no recognition, and therefore he must have thrown it at the bottom of the small trunk in his cabin where it lay forgotten by him, but it was such a critical link to his past.

Disturbed in her reverie by a sound, she looked up to see Chakotay stirring and moaning. Her eyes flew to the doctor.

"I thought you have given him enough sedatives to keep him sleeping, Doctor."

"Captain, I don't understand it myself. He wasn't supposed to wake up for at least another fifteen hours."

Chakotay kept moaning, tossing his head this way and that way until finally he opened his eyes. The doctor stood ready with another hypospray, but she shook her head.

"Please, let him wake up, even if only for a while," she suggested when she saw that his moans were only from his heavy slumber, the process of waking up.

"Janeway..."

Her heart sank.

"I'm Kathryn, remember?"

"Where am I?" he asked. "I was on the Liberty when - when I had this colossal headache."

"You collapsed on the bridge, Captain Chakotay," Doctor Krell replied. "You have been comatose since then."

"What? How long?" he asked, trying to sit up, but she pressed him back. He gave a sigh of relief. Raising himself must have given him pain.

"It's the third day. We are on our way to Vulcan."

"Vulcan?"

"Chakotay," she said gently, "remember what you said about feeling you're one version of yourself and that a part of your life had been wiped out of your memory?"

He nodded uncertainly.

"I also said you're turning me into a good man, Janeway."

"We have the means to restore those memories."

Chakotay went quiet. He closed his eyes and her alarm grew as he started oozing again. She had a damp, soft cloth ready and began dabbing at his mouth, his nostrils. He started shivering.

"Captain, I think I'd better sedate Chakotay again."

"No!" Chakotay yelled suddenly, grabbing her wrist tightly. "You will goddam tell me what the fuck is happening, Janeway, or sure as hell, I will kill you."

"If you'll listen, I'll explain. Please, you're hurting me."

He let go of his stranglehold instantly.

"I know that something is missing from my life, Janeway. You're a part of that life that is missing. A very important part. I am on a strange ship..."

"The Neruk, a Vulcan science vessel."

"Where is my crew? My ship?"

Kathryn sighed, stroked his hand, his cheek, trying to calm his fevered soul.

"Some of your crew had been killed. Dalby, Gerron, Ayala, Torres..."

"Torres?"

"She tried to kill me while you were in the sick bay of the Liberty."

"Who killed her?"

"Tom Paris."

Chakotay fell into silence again.

"Always thought Tom was going to gut that one. She hated you, Janeway."

"I know. Tom said I would never be safe from her."

"Who else?"

"No one else. We have given your crew the choice to leave the Liberty - "

"You took over my ship?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"And my crew left the Liberty? Dalby dead. Ayala. Gerron. Torres. They were my best men, Janeway."

"Chakotay, the crew that left, chose to leave. Seven of your crew are still on the Liberty. Your ship is safe in their hands. If we have to return to the Badlands, they will be waiting for us..."

"The ones who never participated. They never openly challenged me for fear of death, but they refused to indulge in our...sport."

Kathryn cringed when Chakotay reflected their atrocities as a sport. She had a fleeting view of ancient Rome and how they killed prisoners for the sheer fun of it.

"Suder and I had a talk. He is commanding the Liberty at the moment. They are good men and women Chakotay. A young woman, Mariah Henley, is among them."

"They will be waiting? For us?"

"Yes. You have to have the procedure first at the Vulcan Science Institute."

"Why there? And what is the nature of the procedure, Kathryn? Are you involved in this?"

So many questions...

"We are essentially in hiding from Starfleet and Federation officials and Vulcan has agreed to help set up a laboratory where the MRT can be successfully integrated into your brain."

"An MRT."

"Memory Retrieval Transponder."

"Where is this device Kathryn, that holds all my memories of you?"

Kathryn closed her eyes. This was crunch time. How could she tell him how dangerous it was? How could she tell him without him wanting to strangle her again out of sheer anger? She couldn't bear that he touch her in that way again. She couldn't bear to see the hardness, the hatred, the excessive aggression.

"Captain, perhaps it would be best - "

"Shut up, Doctor. I'm asking her. Now, Janeway, it's clear you won't tell me. I'm guessing this might be a risky procedure."

She nodded.

"Then I'm right."

"Yes. But not for you."

How could Chakotay turn from almost blind aggression directed at her in the one moment, and the next his eyes were filled with so much concern that it made her want to weep?

"Kathryn? Where the hell is this MRT?"

She couldn't speak. Her throat worked, her mouth seemed to form words but never a sound issued from her. There was a buzz, a dizzying sound in her head. It would prove fatal. She might die. Might.

"It was the only place where they could put the MRT without it being detected, Chakotay," she whispered finally. How they stole it from Owen Paris and his cohorts was another story...

His tanned skin took on a sallow appearance.

"It's on your person?"

"It's embedded in my skull, at the base. It has to be removed surgically. It cannot be transported since it has grown into and become part of my bone tissue. I've been carrying it for almost two years. It - it is situated very close to my brain..."

"God, Janeway! You would do that, for me?"

"I would sacrifice my life, Chakotay, if it meant I could give you back yours."

***********

TBC


	20. Chapter 20

* * *

Doctor Krell had trouble holding Chakotay down. The angry man had lifted himself twice to a sitting position. The next moment Krell couldn't breathe as strong fingers squeezed the air from his lungs. He had coughed, sputtered, refused to be intimidated. Chakotay was a patient for now. Perhaps not, Krell decided. It needed qualification. He was an experiment, one that three doctors hoped would work to restore him to his former life and unlock the memories that had been violently purged from him.

"I don't want anything to happen to her. Get that?"

The way Chakotay's words rang about the room, he could very well have been threatening all of them. Should Captain Janeway die at their hands, there would be hell to pay. Should Chakotay die at their hands, there would be hell to pay. That was the sound of the threat. They tried to sedate him, but it seemed Chakotay was on a warpath of a different kind. Krell could understand the man's concerns. Here was the embodiment of all evil telling them to look after a woman he violated with no respect for her rank, her sensibilities, or respect for her person. But Chakotay had sensed that he had a life, a far better one than the one he lived in the Badlands and that was what had become attractive. Added to that, Captain Janeway made him realise that he could be a different person, that she was part of his past. Now, having tasted some of it, it waved with long tentacles at him calling him tantalisingly closer to knowing what it was that he missed.

So after his choking and sputtering, Chakotay glared at him.

"Do everything in your power to save her, understand?"

Chakotay looked fierce, restless, worried that something could go wrong with the operation. If truth be told, he was a little worried too, but he wasn't going to admit that to the angry warrior with the angry tattoo. He had had time to study Chakotay's history in the ship's database. His people murdered. Dorvan V destroyed. Genocide committed by the Cardassians in full view of the Federation and seemingly with the Federation's blessing. Was that why Vulcan had agreed to help Janeway and Chakotay find their lives again? He remembered that the Cardassians had attacked Vulcan too, as well as some of her colonies.

Doctor Krell touched Chakotay's shoulder in a reassuring gesture.

"Yes, Captain Chakotay. I promise we will do everything and more. Please, you must lie still," he said as he administered a sedative.

"I will personally k - "

But Chakotay's eyes closed before he could finish. Krell nodded to the Vulcan scientist who stepped forward and began to place tiny transponders at his temples. A cortical stimulator was placed against his forehead.

"Captain Chakotay is safe now, Doctor Krell, in the care of the nurse," Doctor Survot said. "Come, Captain Janeway has been prepared for surgery."

He looked at the nurse who must have sensed his scepticism.

"Do not be concerned, Doctor Krell, that Captain Chakotay will run away…"

He shook his head, then followed Survot to the adjoining room separated from them only by a glass partition.

Krell sighed deeply as he looked at his captain. She was prepared to die for the sake of saving Chakotay's life. He didn't know what their history was together but there was one, a very loving one, he surmised. She lay on her back, her head turned to the side, a small area at the base of her skull shaved. He stood closer and only now he could see the small contusion. Did the MRT shift? he wondered. His heart beat erratically. He was a doctor, but watching the Vulcan scientists was a revelation. They were detached, nerveless; he admired that they could work without showing a single sign of panic.

"Ready..."

Then he watched. The small incision was made in the contusion. He was right. The slight bump must have been the result of movement. No infection had shown up on the scans so she was at least clear of that. The scientists worked swiftly, efficiently, speaking little.

Minutes later, a piece of the skull, no more than a square centimetre, was lifted, like a plate, and placed carefully in a dish. Now lay exposed the MRT, a tiny metal chip that resembled strangely enough, a spider – fat body, ten gangly legs. The tiny sensors were embedded at least one third of the way at their points in her skull, penetrating the membrane. What amazed him was how calmly Survot used the laser to wean away hard tissue and expose the thin sensors. It took skill to operate manually. It would have been easy to transport the MRT, but the very antennae he was looking at, were growing into the soft tissue of her brain. 

He remembered in the two weeks they traveled to the Badlands why she complained so often of headaches...

Kathryn's body suddenly shuddered.

"Stop!" he whispered urgently as the convulsions increased. He tried to hold her head, keep her from moving too much, or worse, bite her tongue..

"Doctor, the hypospray…"

"Yes, yes," he responded, holding the captain's head still before administering the drug, a light sedative to reduce the convulsions. Seconds later the captain lay quiet again, though strangely, a tear seeped from her eye and rolled down her cheek. Krell monitored her breathing which was normal again. But she had given him a start. He remembered Chakotay's threat.

One by one the minute tentacles were exposed. Once again Kathryn went into convulsions and as he tried to stop it, Survot explained "Two of the sensors have grown into the soft brain tissue and are mimicking her nerves, countermanding their instructions."

His heart hammered. Only twenty minutes had passed but it felt to him like an eternity.

Finally, Doctor Survot lifted the tiny MRT very carefully from its bedding and placed it in an alcohol solution for ten seconds.

Hardly had they time to dry the MRT when her body started convulsing again. Krell thought of Chakotay's demand, that they do everything to keep her alive. But now, despite a stronger dose, her body kept shuddering.

"Doctor, perhaps this will help," said the other scientist who stepped forward. "It's a Vulcan drug used to curb seizures."

He was thankful, stepped back to let T'Prit administer the drug. The Captain's teeth were chattering. He held her hands, her nails digging into his skin. Seconds later, the shuddering stopped.

"We have to hurry," said T'Prit as he fitted the plate they had removed earlier back into the open socket. A regenerator was used to seal the edges. A pain reliever was admnistered. When she woke up she would be tired, but free of pain.

"Do not worry, Doctor Krell. Captain Janeway has been stabilised, but it is advisable that we keep her isolated in a private room and let her wake naturally. She is in need of sleep."

He just nodded mutely, touching the captain's hand. She was deathly pale, unconscious after her body had gone into shock. But she was over the worst and half of the procedure was completed. Two nurses entered silently, lifted the captain on a narrow stretcher and wheeled her out to a more private room.

He wanted to follow them, but Survot held him back.

"Captain Janeway is in good hands, Doctor Krell. Your presence at the integration procedure is required as you could shed light on whether the integration had been successful based on Captain Chakotay's responses."

"Thank you, Doctor Survot. I am honoured."

They returned to Chakotay. Krell hoped the warrior wouldn't wake up and a hand would reach quick as a snake for his throat to throttle him again. He had that power and Chakotay was as strong as a beast. The cortical stimulator, he realised now, wasn't one at all, but a receiver which  Survot opened by means of a tiny disk on the upper side, leaving, like in Captain Janeway's skull, a similar housing for the MRT. In fact, it was not only similar, but the MRT fitted perfectly, along with the tiny sensors that lay fanned liked a spider's feet, each one fitting into its slot. Survot closed the receiver. Krell shook his head. They must have implanted the transponder in Captain Janeway right here on Vulcan in the first place and had built the receiver/stimulator to match here as well. Something that Captain Janeway and Tuvok must have arranged long before the time. Also, how did they get the memory chip in the first place?

"Doctor T'Prit, proceed."

Krell kept his eyes on Chakotay. Only the slightest of movements indicated that the MRT had been activated by T'Prit. Survot monitored the transfer of data on his computer.

"It will take four minutes and thirty seven seconds," Survot said.

If it weren't so serious, Krell would have laughed. Four minutes for possibly years of memories? But then, gigaquads of information could be downloaded within seconds. This was a delicate procedure and already Captain Janeway had gone into shock during the operation, suffered convulsions three times and was finally stabilised. He had to be on hand here to monitor Chakotay's emotional and physical responses after the transfer was completed. He wanted to be with Captain Janeway and be there when she woke up, but he had a feeling that that would not be his privilege. A certain warrior with a tattoo lying still while his memories were being re-integrated into his brain, would most certainly claim his right by her side.

Krell thought how their journey had started out, how Captain Janeway expressed her reluctance to her senior officers about entering the Badlands. Was there something going on? Was there more to this business than she let on? Of course, there had to be. She wouldn't be lying here in a ward with Chakotay receiving his memories back if there hadn't being anything. He could only guess.

Several hours ago he had seen Captain Janeway handing a PADD to Tom Paris. Tom, Harry Kim, Eldred Dickson and Nick Locarno had already left in the Liberty's small shuttle, the Limpet. What their mission was, he didn't know. But he knew something was afoot. Everything seemed to have been cloaked in secrecy, not so much from Captain Janeway herself, but Paris, Locarno and Kim. He wondered about Harry Kim. The young ensign had been whored on the Liberty by Paris, yet he chose to accompany the man who violated him, who allowed his friends to beat Kim to within an inch of his life.

Strange.

"Doctor…"

He jerked to the present. All eyes were on Chakotay who lay very still. T'Prit and Survot made a production of removing the small sensors at his temples. Chakotay was still unconscious.

"Download complete," said T'Prit, removing the cortical stimulator from Chakotay's forehead. "You may now wake him, Doctor Krell."

He had the hypospray ready, clamped between damp fingers. He could feel a film of perspiration on his upper lip. What if it didn't work? What if all their work was for nothing? What if Janeway died? He had been assured of the success of the procedure, assured by the Vulcan doctors that nothing would go wrong, that they had a hundred percent chance of success.

Now he reached for Captain Chakotay's neck, pressed the hypospray.

There was a soft hiss.

Chakotay's eyes opened slowly, like one taking in images one by one, cataloguing and remembering, or confused only fleetingly until recognition dawned when his eyes met those of T'Prit and Survot. Dry lips seemed to move. Dark, brooding eyes met with his, connected, stayed, became bewildered.

"Welcome back, Captain Chakotay."

Then Chakotay looked to the left, his eyes colliding with a blank wall. He turned his head to the other side, the side of the glass partition. He turned to them, frowned, turned back to face the partition. Then he lifted himself to a sitting position and true as hell, a hand snaked out and grabbed Krell's neck.

Krell saw the contact as panic rather than anger, for Captain Chakotay's eyes shifted maddeningly, as if he indeed missed something intensely. The man was going to wring the life from him.

"Where is Kathryn?" Chakotay asked, his voice hoarse, anguished.

"Captain, you're strangling me...please let me go..."

The vice grip was relaxed instantly, though not the look of abject disquiet in Chakotay's eyes.

"Where is Kathryn? Where is my wife?"

************************** 

TBC


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual warnings apply for this chapter.

* * *

"Look, Harry. I know what I did. I killed Jenny. I killed Torres. I engaged in unspeakable atrocities. It's not easy to live it down. It will never be easy. I don't think I will ever live it down. But right now, I need your help on this mission."

Nick looked from Tom to Harry, wondering when the ensign would make up his mind. He had been wary of Tom, but Tom looked finished. They had beaten the snot out of him. Besides, the man wanted to reform. Blood flowed thicker than water. He too had reformed and what do you know? It was Captain Janeway who engineered their change of hearts. In retrospect, it was not so unusual after all. Their own sister helping them on the straight and narrow. He still had nightmares about Joshua Albert and Tom would have nightmares about Jenny until he died. It was collateral damage in the reformation process.

"Harry, Harry, Harry," he cajoled, "we need your help."

"Now it's _we_ ," he grumbled angrily. He could understand Harry brooding on his anger. He had suffered great humiliation at Tom's hands.

"You could stay on the Neruk. We'll find someone else. Then again, you're the best man for the job. And Dickson here is our munitions expert."

"I've decided my home can wait. This is an important mission," Eldred Dickson added, the look he gave Harry suggesting that they would never be able to get the job done without and operations expert. 

"Well…"

"There. Done. Harry, pack your bags."

"Hey, I haven't said anything yet."

"But you're going to," he told the ensign, placing his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Thanks, Harry."

Harry shook his head, looked bullish and then got into the shuttle. Minutes later they were cleared for take-off.

"Where are we going?"

"Utopia Planitia, Federation Headquarters, Starfleet Headquarters, Palings..."

"Tom! Are you crazy? Aren't you a wanted man? How are you going to get past security?"

"Harry, Harry, you're supposed to get us in," Tom replied.

"And do what?"

"You'll see."

"And that's where you come in," Tom explained. "But first, we're going to dock with the USS Audensberg."

"That's my ship!" Dickson declared. "They'll be glad to see me."

"Captain Mo'ayer Bon is the son of my father's closest friend."

Nick grimaced. He knew Tom, knew O. M. Paris, knew of Admiral Bon. Tom had built up many more contacts that he had, knew many more people. Nick sighed. His mother, a Starfleet doctor, kept him mostly out of the spotlight, if being O.M.P's son meant being in the spotlight. A very negative one at that. It didn't stop him from going off the rails. He had been on a damned good wicket at the Academy. Stupid Kolvoord Starburst.

"That's drawing the circle narrow," Nick said as he watched Tom maneuver the highly maneuverable Limpet away from Vulcan on its way to rendezvous with the USS Audensberg.

"Admiral Bon's son almost got ensnared by Daddy, Nick. And you know what that means."

It meant Admiral Bon and O. M. Paris were no longer friends.

"I know. Sorry, Tom."

"We were all victims," Tom said bitterly. Nick couldn't see his expression but if he became angry and bit his lip every time he felt bitter, that was probably how Tom looked too. They had the same mannerisms, according to Kim. Yeah, he knew how Tom looked right now.

"Okay, Tom, I've got the PADD. I'll download it to this sweet stolen Federation vid-com. What am I looking at?"

"Listen up, you guys," Tom started. "Here's the deal. Captain Janeway, uh...Kathryn, brought a small trunk with her on the Neruk. It's Chakotay's property. She found this PADD. It is the recorded moments of the explosion of Voyager."

"You fired at us," he and Harry spoke simultaneously.

"Yeah, that we did. But my guess is Chakotay wouldn't have taken the time to record the death of a starship for his amusement. There must have been something there. Something he saw and which, God help us, we might also see. Got the download ready?"

Nick worked quickly and soon he saw the images. He was piloting, doing a damn good job of it too. Maneuvering through a small nebula, approaching plasma turbulence loaded with debris from other wrecks, asteroids... He had been concentrating hard on keeping Voyager on an even keel.

Then suddenly, the appearance of the Limpet. Against Voyager the Limpet looked minuscule. Eldred Dickson was studying the footage with interest. Nick saw him frown.

"The Limpet fired into the plasma turbulence," he said reflectively.

"Meaning it didn't strike Voyager."

"No. Here," he pointed to a small cloud, "you can see where the phaser fire hit a piece of debris."

Nick nodded. At that point Voyager had not fired yet, but her shields were not raised.

Curious, as Tuvok and every Vulcan would have said.

"Voyager's shields aren't raised."

"They never were, Dickson."

"Tuvok tried to raise them but his console jammed at that moment," Harry said where he sat in the seat next to Tom.

"But only after the Liberty's phaser fire hit the turbulence. Tuvok had been trying desperately to get the shields up."

"And when he did, it was too late - "

"And Voyager exploded? Don't you think it a little strange?"

Of course it was strange.

Nick looked. He looked again. Couldn't keep his eyes off the screen. They really needed a holodeck simulation to do this properly and make an analysis of the explosion. His eyes popped. Then his ears buzzed. He wasn't going to mention anything more now but simply feed his own suspicions which, up until now, had never even been there. If he thought hard about it, tried to enact in his mind and create a scenario of his place on the bridge, Captain Janeway standing behind him, Cavit standing near the command chairs... He heard something. Harry shouted.

Goddammit!

 _Lie to them, for now, Locarno. Lie to them. The truth is a swinger._ _You know how to lie. Tell the truth afterwards..._

"Yes, it's a little strange," he replied. "Maybe the asteroids and debris and the turbulence created a cascading effect."

"Could be," Tom said, sounding very sceptical.

Yet, the images before him produced nothing of the kind in his view. They couldn't see it because they were Voyager; they were under attack. But Chakotay, on the bridge of the Liberty and piloting, had a better picture. An overall view. And eyes like a hawk.

The moment the Liberty fired on Voyager, it hit Voyager on her starboard side. The ship had careened sharply to her left. Then, the first explosion that rocked the vessel's aft side, disabling the port nacelle. Rather, it was the nacelle that exploded... The crippled ship was a sitting duck, but under whose attack? It seemed sure as hell not the Liberty or the Limpet with her puny phaser bank. Did the shields create an aperture right where the explosion occurred? How was that possible?

"Nick!"

"Yeah, I'm on it," he replied irritably when Tom glanced backwards.

"Lieutenant," Eldred Dickson whispered, "am I right I thinking what I'm thinking here?"

Nick nodded, pressed fingers to his lips. Dickson acknowledge that he had to remain quiet while the others' attention was on the small viewscreen.

"Tom, what I'm seeing here can best be simulated in a holodeck…"

"That's why I've secured an invitation for us to join the Audensberg. Mo'ayer Bon has promised to keep our presence there circumspect, even yours, Dickson. You're supposed to be dead."

_So are we all…_

"I know," Dickson replied. "My co-pilot died in the shuttle crash in the Badlands when we were trying to evade the Liberty. Well, let's just say I'm glad Torres isn't around anymore."

"Good for you, Dickson.," said Nick, signalling to him again to keep his eyes on the screen of the vid-com. Dickson nodded.

Nick pointed to the port nacelle, then pointed again to the starboard side where the Liberty's phaser hit Voyager.

It was unbelievable, he thought. Maybe a holodeck simulation may not be needed after all. How could the port nacelle explode after Voyager was hit on the starboard side close to the bow of her primary hull? And, it didn't just burst into flames. It exploded. He remembered hearing that sound, remembered pulling Voyager sharply to starboard again. Remembered hearing the second explosion. Remembered that the Liberty fired and hit their primary hull near the bridge only seconds after that explosion.

Nick felt his stomach heaving as a wave of nausea hit him. It was unbelievable. He hoped that he was wrong. He hoped that Voyager had been destroyed by the Liberty and not by… He gulped in air, swallowed hard. Dickson was looking strangely at him, not saying anything as he had been instructed.

"I believe," said Dickson, saving the moment, "that a holodeck simulation on the Audensberg would improve our chances of analysing Captain Chakotay's recording."

"As our munitions expert," Tom replied, "we will be docking at Utopia Planitia shipyards on Mars."

"Are you thinking that the ship's design may have been flawed? Could that be possible?" Harry asked.

"Not with Doctor Leah Brahms heading Engineering Design and Admiral Krog in charge of Armaments."

"You're saying there isn't a flaw, Tom?"

"I'm saying there isn't a flaw."

Nick considered it sensible to shut off the vid-com and sink himself into his own thoughts until they reached the Audensberg, several hours away. The extreme nausea had lessened to a lingering queasiness.

 _We were all supposed to be dead_ , he thought. What the hell was happening?

And then, Chakotay. Did he realise the same thing and therefore wanted to keep a record of the event? All of them had thought that Chakotay simply transported the ten survivors for their usefulness as trading bargains, to sell them into slavery. Chakotay - closed off, enigmatic, brooding, hardly ever talking of whatever thoughts plagued him or whatever was on his mind. Courtesy Paris during their own private conversations on route to Vulcan.

Closed off. One might think him a complete madman.

Chakotay was anything but.

He didn't want to think how Tom and Harry were going to react when they ran a simulation and confirmed his own theories. Hell, they weren't even theories. They were facts, evidence clear as daylight. Only, they had been so traumatised for days after being "rescued" that none of the survivors, including Kathryn Janeway had given it any thought. Her ship collapsed from under her feet and she thought the plasma storms, the phaser fire from the Liberty and the Limpet killed it in a cascading series of fires and smaller explosions until it erupted into one ball of flames.

It was easy to see why Chakotay simply let everyone believe that firing into the plasma storms ignited a series of explosions on Voyager. Kathryn believed that another vessel had been aft of starboard when the starboard nacelle exploded.

A photon torpedo programmed to set off seconds after the port nacelle also exploded. God in heaven!

He had been hit, burned badly and lost consciousness. He knew that Kathryn had been lying somewhere just behind him. Cavit had given a scream, and then was quiet, his body sliced in half by a flying bulkhead.

On the screen it was so clear to see.

So clear.

Did he fall asleep? It went quiet in the shuttle and remained so for some time. He woke with a start when Dickson shook him.

"We're in the shuttle bay of the USS Audensberg," he said proudly.

******** 

"Oh, God in heaven…" came Tom's exclamation after almost two hours of programming and running the simulation. .

They were in holodeck four where they had downloaded Chakotay's recording. Tom had set up the bridge of Voyager and they had placed themselves strategically, enacting the last minutes of the ship's existence.

Just as he had seen and concluded studying the recording on the vid-com about the time lapses between the Liberty and Limpet's phaser fire and the explosions of the nacelles and now, clearly, other areas of Voyager, they could see now during the holodeck simulation. Deck by deck the ship virtually folded. All ship's systems collapsed. They were sitting ducks, and the Liberty had only fired once or twice. It was possible for Voyager to blow the Liberty to space dust with one photon torpedo, but those heavy missiles were on self-destruct the minute phaser fire hit the bridge.

Not the ship. Self-destruct sequence could only be initiated and halted by the commanding officer of the vessel. By that time Kathryn Janeway was already lying unconscious on the bridge.

"There," said Dickson, "the Liberty's phaser fire hit Voyager here…" then, pointing to the primary hull, starboard side, "and the port nacelle explodes on impact, as it were."

"That can't be right," said Harry.

"Harry, you can programme the computers of a starship to do anything, right? Have you considered that the nacelles may have been programmed to explode once Voyager was hit anywhere? Or, in hell's damnation, just one photon torpedo? Those photons did self-destruct. Just look. Look!"

Nick grabbed Harry's arm and clucked impatiently. Harry, manacled and beaten into submission on the Liberty, still believed the world could be good.

"Not possible."

"I design and programme photon torpedoes, Nick," Dickson said, looking to him for support. "It's possible to set just one torpedo to activate and detonate on impact, once certain parameters for an explosion had been set."

"And then provide remote settings so that … Holy mother of God…"

"Here, the big explosion, precisely 0.036 sec after Chakotay transported ten of the ship's crew to the Liberty. Was that coincidence? Or was it intervention?" he asked.

"Sabotage…" Tom whispered. "Someone murdered a ship full of people..."

There was a stunned silence after he spoke, each mulling the implication and magnitude of what they had discovered.

"Then Chakotay didn't transport the survivors just because he needed to barter with them," Harry conceded unwillingly. "Or whore them on his ship."

There was a twinge of bitterness in Harry's voice. Nick could understand, but he found Chakotay's behaviour incongruous. He had them on his ship in his cargo bay and then he used them for his amusement. That was one Chakotay, or the evil version of Chakotay. The other had known, had seen what was happening and transported as many who were still alive from the stricken vessel.

"No, Harry," he sighed. "Not based on this evidence before us."

"He abused us, whored us, treated us like fucking shit," Harry said quietly, his eyes darkly unhappy.

"He saved our lives…"

"What kind of a paradox is that?"

"If we want to find out, we have to go to the source," Tom answered. Nick knew what he meant.

"Who is the source?" Harry asked. Nick wanted to laugh. One moment Harry fumed like hell and the next he was totally perplexed.

"Owen McKenzie Paris."

"Your _father_?"

"Aye."

**************

TBC


	22. Chapter 22

* * *

Chakotay opened his eyes. He opened his eyes and into them flew Kathryn. She was there and she filled him with light. In a field covered with yellow daisies that danced in the breeze and butterflies fluttered noiselessly, creating, as they touched here and there on the flowers, darting shadows that became their avatars which mimicked the movements of their owners.

Even as she moved, the breeze took the flared skirt, lapping her ankles in gentle cadence. How could she not hover, or glide, or in the name of the heavens, become an angel that, like her own little butterflies seemed to touch here and there and yet it never felt as if she made any connection?

Just the simple movement of wholly coming and becoming part of him.

Kathryn laughed and her laughter filled the silences around him. Her laughter assimilated the demonic noises in him and slowly, ecstatically, silenced each of them, sent them away to corners of his conscious where they cowered in fear of the new enemy.

It was an enemy that appeared on the wings of angels. Lifted momentarily from the colourful fields of flowers, against the very blue skies where pure white billowing clouds had moved away, leaving the entire heavens as her palette, emblazoned in new words that even as they burned, could only ever spell the words _peace, fulfilment, harmony, completion._

They took his weight and lifted him as if he were nothing. Everywhere she was. In the furthest recesses of his conscious, in his past, in his present. Yes, he exclaimed in wordless and breathless wonder, Kathryn laughed. It was the sound of bells. Her hair, freed from their braided restraints, flowed in long waves, lifted occasionally by the breeze whenever she moved her head.

She reached him and stopped, and the stopping itself was an essay of movement as the lifting hair, the gently lapping skirts against her ankles, the long looped earrings came to a halt, as if they merely paused their movement.

As she sighed, her breath flowed from her and entered his body.

Only then he started to breathe.

********

Doctor Krell helped him up when he asked for Kathryn. For a moment after he opened his eyes, it appeared to him as if she vanished from his sight again and he had been frantic that she could be gone forever. She had been gone.

Two years.

He remembered clearly the day he had been captured, brought in secret to a laboratory at Starfleet Headquarters. He had been pressed into a chair, a brace fitted on his head. He had sworn high and low that he was going to kill the man in front of him. He had sworn high and low that he was going to come back one day and never rest until the man was dead. The man had a helper, a woman who looked scared out of her wits.

He knew the helper and though he had never before seen her, her likeness was too striking not to be missed. He had been stunned and then, as the metal brace had been pressed down and fitted his skull, all lights around it and the tiny electrodes relayed their currents into his brain.

"There is nothing to it, Captain. Just lie back and the procedure will be completely painless."

Then the red clad admiral, red and gold stripes of command on the cuffs of his jacket sleeves, sat down at a console and began entering commands.

He had tried to blank out the pain as it struck him, shooting like a lance clear through his brain and cutting it in half. And then he screamed.

He screamed and screamed and screamed and the pain wouldn't stop. It was as if they used tiny lances and cut his brain into pieces, leaving little blobs of gray tissue lying where the dogs hungrily licked up his life.

And one by one every image he had of Kathryn, his wife, his love, his life, receded from his memory. He couldn't stop screaming as she left him.

The first day he met her. Young ensign freshly assigned to the USS Endeavour. He had been a young lieutenant who had seen her in the grounds of Starfleet when he had been home from a mission. She had smiled at him, yet her smile had been tinged with sadness. He had asked her name, and when she spoke, it sounded like music.

Gone was that memory and every image associated with that meeting, during and after that event.

Kathryn in a field of daisies wearing a heavenly blue dress running towards him. Married to him only ten weeks. They were happy. Happy! The sadness had gone from her eyes.

"Chakotay, I have the most wonderful news for you, my love," she breathed against him as he caught her in his arms.

"What news can be better than Kathryn home from a mission and in my arms for the next three weeks?" he had asked.

"Oh, you'll know soon enough! But only over dinner by candle light, darling."

"Sounds good to me."

Gone was that memory and all images associated with that memory, before, during and after that event.

"Make love to me, Chakotay. Make sweet love to me and let my body sing for you,"' she murmured.

"Right here?"

"Why not? This is our spot, our little peace of heaven on Earth. Right under this giant oak, with the dappled rays like dancing lights over our bodies."

He had complied, because his own body needed hers as much as she needed his. Her body, its creamy, smooth alabaster so translucent that he hardly wanted to touch her but rather worship her with his eyes only, beckoned. He had learned how translucent alabaster belied its own fragility and proved remarkably strong as he kissed every centimetre of her body until, in ceaseless impatience, the rose  opened, revealing its delicate centre  with its soft petals. He sipped with great and infinite thirst from the nectar -  sweet honey, hypnotic elixir that once supped, gave him life, transformed him from the dead to a living, breathing, loving being. He had slid his body up along her in helpless fascination of her perfection and, while staring at her, while his fingers trembled as they touched closed eyes, parted lips, throbbing pulse in the hollow of her neck, entered her and became one with her.

He had never loved her more than he did that day when in his wordless adoration all sense of time and smell and place became a swirling mass of sexual energy neither transformed or assimilated but simply just being.

It was his body that cried, his hands that wrote, his eyes that seared, his breathing that recorded the immortal words _I...love...you..._

Gone was that memory and all images associated with that memory, before, during and after that event.

"Your life is in danger, Chakotay."

The sad look was back in her eyes.

"Do not worry so, Kathryn. After all, the man is your father..."

"He raped my mother. I am the result of that rape. He killed my mother. Chakotay, you don't know his malevolence..."

"I understand, honey. It's no reason for me to run away, okay? I can handle him."

"He is evil and very powerful. I am not proud."

"No, you're not, because sweetheart, the man who was your Daddy was the real man who loved you without condition, who cared for you and who understood you."

He saw her eyes fill with tears. It made him sad seeing her sad. Owen Paris wanted his wife. He closed his eyes. Kathryn was right. How far would such a man go to fulfil his sexual depravities? Incest?

Indeed. His son was his lover, against his will. The son who was also Kathryn's half brother.

"I am going to confront him, Kathryn."

"Chakotay! No! He will do anything to destroy you."

"He tried to rape you, Kathryn! What manner of man would rape his own kin? What manner of man?"

He had appeared at Starfleet Headquarters where Kathryn had been summoned earlier by Owen Paris to his office. Because she had promised she'd be only half an hour, half and hour later was thirty minutes too late and he had gone, already knowing of Owen Paris's doings and making certain that Kathryn was safe. He had never liked Owen Paris anywhere near Kathryn. The man had a roving and shifting eye, a man who looked with un-fatherly lecherous, lustful eyes at her, undressing her, conjuring images no doubt of having sex with her.

What he saw made his blood boil. Kathryn had been held over the desk by a pair of strong hands that had already stripped her pants over her hips. Owen  was trying to spread her and force his way into her. One hand clamped her mouth. Kathryn looked like she would die of shame as she tried to fight him off. her.

Chakotay had pulled Paris roughly away and flattened him with one swipe of his fist. He had taken Kathryn, waited for her to dress again. Then he had calmly walked round the desk and kicked Paris's guts out.

"Touch her again and you're good as fucking dead."

It had taken him days to calm Kathryn who was nearly raped by the man who fathered her.

What manner of man would rape his own kin?

And then he had lodged a formal complaint with Starfleet Command. Warned Command that one of their own dishonoured the name of Starfleet by his lack of decorum, listing one by one his criminal acts, including the death of Kathryn's father, Vice-Admiral Edward Adam Janeway. Warned them that he suspected Owen McKenzie Paris poisoned Gretchen Janeway who had threatened to expose his lewd behaviour to Starfleet.

As if Starfleet had never been aware they had a sick fuck in their midst.

Was Command afraid of this powerful man?

"He'll never leave us alone, Chakotay. Not now..."

He had given a sigh.

Then he had gone again to Owen McKenzie Paris and told him to leave them alone.

"Because if you don't, Kathryn and I will hand over evidence to Starfleet Command that you have murdered the President of the Federation. He didn't die of natural causes, as everyone was made to believe."

Gone was that memory and all images associated with that memory, before, during and after that event.

"Phoebe is our only hope, Kathryn."

"She has never liked me, Chakotay. We should ask someone else. Or better still, leave the Alpha Quadrant and settle far, far away from this..."

"But you love Earth...Indiana..."

"I know! But if we're to make a life together, he will always hover over us like a dark evil cloud."

He sighed. She was right. He could feel the danger, living under constant threat.

"We'll go somewhere else, Kathryn."

Kathryn threw herself into his embrace. He felt her whole body shiver. She was a  strong woman, a pro-active woman and Starfleet officer who would soon make captain. Yet, Owen Paris threw her for a loop. He scared her, especially after his attempted rape.

Gone was that memory and all images associated with that memory, before, during and after that event.

In its place they implanted all manner of evil.

When he saw Kathryn again, she was a stranger and he didn't recognise her. When he raped his first victim, he never asked for names. Sweet young virgin, daughter of a minister. It was overlooked because Owen Paris saw to it that he commit atrocities in Federation Space first before letting the Federation hounds loose on him.

No memory of Kathryn, his wife with whom he had made a good life.

No memory that he had ever been a man of honour.

No memory.

********* 

"Captain Janeway is in a private room, Captain Chakotay," said Doctor Krell. "Captain?"

"Yes?"

"You know who I am?"

"Of course. You are the CMO of the USS Voyager."

"We have integrated your memories. How do you feel?"

He rose abruptly from the bed, felt only slightly groggy from the sedative.

"I feel fine, Doctor."

"And your memories?"

"I remember everything. Everything, Doctor. And that is why it is imperative I see my wife immediately."

Krell nodded, also understood the need for privacy as he remained standing while Doctor Survot spoke.

"Follow me."

Chakotay's mind whirled continuously, as if the years of data  and memories still needed to warm up in his brain. He turned to face Krell.

"I don't know how to thank you..."

"None required, Captain."

"Don't think that because I have my memories restored, that I have none now of the crimes I had committed. I will pay for that for the rest of my life, Krell."

Krell simply nodded and without speaking further, Chakotay followed Survot from the room to where Kathryn was.

Only short walk across to another, smaller building.

"A clinic, Captain Chakotay."

"In understand. My wife...how did she come through the procedure?"

"There have been moments that it was possible she would not survive, but she is strong, Captain. I believe that it is the knowledge that you would be healed for her that has strengthened her."

"And those moments? What happened?"

"She went into convulsions three times. The third time was severe. But we have managed to stabilise her. She should still be sleeping peacefully."

"Thank you. For all you have done."

"Vulcan would have been annihilated had it not been for you, Captain Chakotay."

"I take no compliments for my part in uncovering the plot."

"We honour our warriors, Captain. You are one of our warriors."

What could he say but accept the acknowledgement with grace?

They entered the cool entrance of the clinic. Chakotay wanted to rush into the first room. There were a thousand and one things he wanted to say to her. Ten thousand things he wanted to muse over with her, a million questions he wanted to ask.

And of all the millions of questions, extract from them only two or three that stood out, that were beacons of light of his life with her,  burning, burning issues that he needed to know, and others that he needed to tell her.

But most of all, he wanted to see Kathryn. His Kathryn. Kathryn of his past and now, his present. See her face and taste, see every line, every pore, every hair, every minute movement that was the essence of Kathryn Janeway.

"Here," Doctor Survot said coolly as he stopped in front of a door and entered the codes to open the door.

He had no time to look back to where Survot had vanished to. The door stood open.

She was awake. She was sitting up. She was in tears.

"Chakotay?"

He walked up to the bed like a very, very old man, a man who struggled to put one foot in front of the other, hunched forward as though heavy rocks bore down on his back. But he couldn't tear his gaze from her tear-filled eyes.

Her hair was loose, like the very first time he had seen her, free and carefree Kathryn whose life changed when she met him.

A debt he can never repay as he sank down on his knees next to her. How warm her hands felt as they caressed his head, how soft and warm and loving and forgiving!

His hands reached for her, gripping, gripping, wanting the touch to last forever.

The world and its misery was forgotten for the moment as he rose up and looked into her eyes again.

"Kathryn, my love...my life..."

She gave a sob. Already he had seen the chain and locket around her neck. Reverently he touched it, opened the locket and stared at its contents until his eyes bled.

"Beautiful...beautiful..." he murmured, the pain in every syllable he uttered.

"We must go, Chakotay. We must find Phoebe. We must make our family complete again."

"Then I must tell you that Phoebe was there the day Owen Paris purged my memories of you."

"I know. It was the hold they had over me sending me into the Badlands..."

"Their plan misfired, Kathryn."

"Chakotay?"

"Later. Let me kiss you and then we go and find Phoebe."

"Find Phoebe."

"And take back what is rightfully ours."

************* 

TBC


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings apply here.

* * *

Harry Kim's eyes were on the back of Paris and Locarno who were  sitting at the conn of the shuttle Tiberius, one of the Audensberg's three type 11 shuttles. They were all in Starfleet uniform.

"Remember," Captain Bon had said two hours ago, "you're all dead."

Even before they had started on the shuttle simulation, Bon informed them that Voyager was destroyed in the Badlands and its entire crew with her. That had been the official communiqué that had been circulated throughout the Federation a week ago.

"Let me guess, Captain," said Tom, "Admiral Owen Paris sent out the communiqué."

"Yes. It came from his office, by his instruction."

"And no doubt, the Maquis was responsible for destroying the ship and its crew," Nick added.

"Well, now you know that there were survivors. Ten of them," Tom said bitterly. "Ensign Kim and Lieutenant Locarno are two of those ten survivors, as well as Captain Janeway - "

"Kathryn Janeway is alive?"

Bon had sounded incredulous.

"And so are Lieutenant-Commander Tuvok, Doctor Krell and Lieutenant-Commander Rollei..."

"Just what did the communiqué say?" Tom had asked, his eyes narrowing.

And then Captain Bon had let them read the communiqué.

It read like an obituary.

Dead: Captain Kathryn Janeway.

Dead: Commander Ordell Cavit

Dead: Doctor Krell, Chief Medical Officer

Dead: Lieutenant-Commander Tuvok and Lieutenant-Commander Rollei.

The full crew complement of the USS Voyager listed and commendations, commemorations and memorial services held for the dead.

All organised by the office of Admiral Owen McKenzie Paris.

He really wanted Voyager wiped from the skies of the Alpha Quadrant.

That had been their first shock and hardly had they recovered from that, when they learned that Voyager had been sabotaged, its crew murdered.

Died in the Badlands.

Engineered by none other than Admiral Owen McKenzie Paris.

What did he have against Kathryn Janeway and Chakotay? Harry wondered.

Tom and Nick were talking softly and Eldred Dickson was sitting at a console opposite him, getting up to date on the Federation news and scientific advances that had been made in the last six months. He had family on Earth as they learned, but while with them on their mission, they had made it clear that he not let them know he was alive and on his way home.

Harry had been busy the last hour disguising their signals and identities so that they were ostensibly crew of the Audensberg making their way to Utopia Planitia. They all now had Federation communicator pins, Tom and Nick dressed in command red, he in gold and Dickson in the familiar teal of science.

"There, I'm done. We have clearance for Utopia Planitia, gentlemen," he said as he finished.

"Thanks, Harry," Tom replied, glancing backwards quickly and giving him a smirk.

He had gotten used to seeing that smirk, but on Nick's face. Tom was hardly any different.

Harry grimaced.

He knew he should hate Tom Paris forever. He knew that what Tom did to him was criminal and humiliating. He had been subjected to all kinds of crude sexual depravity, from Tom, from his friends, gang-raped when he wouldn't comply, gang-raped until he submitted willingly to them. He didn't know what was worse - the gang-rapes or those in which Tom alone humiliated him to the point that he no longer thought of himself as Harry Kim, but as a tool, an object with fuckholes. His mouth and his ass - what did it matter? And then Tom sometimes brought in Torres, and while Dalby and Tom worked him front and back, Tom would frig his cock until he got ramrod stiff, against his will find the quick rubbing of his cock sensual. Torres had no morals. She would strip down, calmly slide beneath him and Tom would press him down on her until he filled her.

Harry closed his eyes and died again of the unknown, unbidden lust that got him to fuck Torres until he spilled like a seed fountain in her. Dalby's hands would rub his cheeks and he'd say, "Good boy, Harry" while Tom's cock kept pumping up his ass. Eventually, he found even that soothing, the sliding in and out to the tip, then pounding hard into him.

In Tom's cabin he had never been dressed. He was always naked, and even when they walked him to Dalby or Ayala's cabin, he would walk naked down the corridor, always flanked by two males.

That first day in the cargo bay when Tom had brazenly kissed him in front of everyone, he had felt the way his body heated up. Shocked by what he was experiencing his mouth opened, letting Tom's tongue slide in effortlessly. He tasted a man's tongue in his mouth. It had never happened to him. He had never thought it would ever happen, and yet right there, a man was making love to him.

His lips had burned and his erection was plain for Tom and his friends to see. He wanted to die of shame. Blue-blue eyes, a quirky smile and a hard cock up his ass. That was his fate on the Liberty. After their games during the day when they had finished their shifts, Tom never left him out of his sight. He slept with Tom, spooned against Tom's body so that Tom had easy access to gripping his cock he had already caressed to hardness. He could feel Tom's erection pressing into him. Sometimes, completely exhausted, he'd fall asleep like that, even moaning in his half slumber as he enjoyed the slow pumping.

In the middle of the night, he'd feel movement. He would be on his back while Tom kissed him sensually to wakefulness. Tom's breath mingling with his, lips that sought, not hungrily, but deliberately teasing until he kissed back, probing his own tongue in Tom's mouth, nipping the lower lip, feeling the unaccustomed softness and the moist of it burning through his whole body. For minutes they would lie close, locked in embrace, kissing one another with heady sensual lust. Tom's hands, fascinated with his hair, always played there while they kissed, then the mouth would start to roam, down to the jaw, his tongue grazing over the stubble, creating an unbearably sexy raspy sound. Then the tongue would find the hollow in his neck and tickle him till he sputtered with pleasure. Or, he would trace the route down Tom's chest to the navel, dip his tongue there and later, hover uncertainly at his cock, now hot and hard and inviting. And all the time he burned to have Tom's cock in his mouth, or his ass, feeling it move slowly in until he was filled to the hilt. He'd groan from pure agony and pleasure, and when he'd give in to the pleasure, try to bank it down. By then it was too late.

"Shhh... Let it go, sweetheart...let it go... Be yourself..."

Only then he'd give himself to the breathless, the giddy ecstasy of being made love to by Tom. Into the early hours they would make love until exhausted, they would fall asleep. In the morning, the shame would be in his eyes again as he opened them only to find Tom had already been sucking him and his erection so painful that Tom would bend over  and say, "Here, this one's for you..."

He hated it. He hated Tom. He hated most that he could give in so quickly. Pretty soon he was as lustfully on heat as Tom was. Then Tom would sit propped against the headboard, legs open and he would be there, sucking the engorged flesh.

"That's it, darling, gently now. No teeth, okay? Shhh..." 

He would make love to Tom's cock, lick it, take him in his mouth, press his lips close and work slowly down to the base, blowing hot air, then grazing upwards to the tip again. Thoroughly work his way all over the flesh, the balls, squeezing gently, making them moist, flicking along the base back to the tip again.

"That's good..." Tom would murmur with half closed eyes. "Now, Harry, let me fuck you..."

Only then Tom would move to a kneeling position, and ram his well oiled cock down his throat.

Harry sighed again.

After a while, God help him, he was beginning to enjoy it.

He began to enjoy it and Tom was quick to sense it. It was a bizarre situation. He was a prisoner, a love toy, a slave who had to fuck Torres or other women of the Maquis at Tom's whim, but at night, be belonged to Tom only. It was the only time he relished, because it was a way of escaping being eaten up by a gang.

Now, sitting in the Tiberius, on their way to Utopia Planitia, he looked at Tom, stealing glances from time to time so that Dickson wouldn't notice anything. But Dickson had to know. Harry shook his head. He had a fantasy - for that was what he was beginning to have - of being on a bed, propped against pillows with Tom sucking him off, making love to his cock like he had to do to Tom. He'd run his fingers through Tom's hair, stroke the cheek that stood slightly rounded as his cock filled Tom's mouth, feel the total sensuality of the movement and lose himself in the ecstasy of it. Later they would lie together and he'd spend a full ten minutes just kissing the blonde, blue-eyed Badlands Bay Boy.

Like it or not, he had begun to enjoy being Tom's lover.

It was a thought that horrified him as much as it fascinated him.

Being a hostage, and falling for the hostage taker.

He was wakened from his prurient thoughts by Dickson who pointed to his bulging crotch. In abject shame he covered himself with his hands, trying to hide his erection. He must have blushed deeply for his face was on fire.

"It's okay," Dickson whispered as he moved closer so that the others couldn't hear. "I know how you feel...about him..."

********

Leah Brahms listened with shock to the four men who stood in her office. According to all reports, these men were supposed to be dead. But most shocking was that there were survivors of the Voyager disaster and two of them were here. Harry Kim and Nick Locarno. She had done a double take when she laid eyes on Nick, thinking him to be Tom Paris, until Paris followed just behind him. Both were in red uniforms and almost identical in appearance.

"And you say that Captain Janeway has survived the crash?"

They all stood on attention until she clucked impatiently. "At ease, gentlemen."

Immediately they relaxed their stance, yet all looked really serious. And after what they just told her, she thought they were pulling her leg.

"She is alive, Doctor Brahms," Nick Locarno answered. "Alive and well."

"I shouldn't ask where she is, is that it?"

"For the time being, no," said Tom. "Look, Doctor, this is Lieutenant Eldred Dickson and he served on the Audensberg. He is our munitions expert."

"You arrived here in one of her shuttles, cloaked as Audensberg officers. I understand the need for secrecy, if what you've just told me is true. I am not saying you are lying to me, gentlemen, but it's impossible to have breached security here and programme Voyager's weapons array to self-destruct without a Captain's authorisation.

"Doctor, we have the proof here," Tom said, holding a data pad in his hand. "It's a holodeck simulation of the last minutes before Voyager exploded. Captain Chakotay - "

"Chakotay? Isn't he - ?"

"Dead?"

"No, that's not what I meant, Tom Paris. And I think you know what I mean."

She watched as Tom looked to the others, as if he knew something he didn't want them to know. The indecision lasted only a few seconds.

"Yes, Doctor. Chakotay is her husband - "

"What?" exclaimed Eldred Dickson.

"I knew it!" chorused Nick and Harry, and Nick added, "So much makes sense now..."

"It does. Gentlemen, let me view the simulation..." She gestured they leave and followed them outside. "Follow me..."

The first holosuite was the best one, she thought as she keyed in her codes and the doors opened.

Fifteen minutes later she stood as she had when she entered - completely still. Only this time her eyes were moist from unshed tears. A lump had formed in her throat and speaking was laboured.

"This cannot be..."

"That's what I thought as well, Doctor," Harry Kim said. "What we need to find out is who did the programming."

She turned and face the four young men. They were supposed to be dead, at least two of them. They were supposed to be dead, along with their Captain and a few senior officers who survived. It was impossible to live through an explosion such as she just witnessed.

Someone killed a ship full of people. It was so clear to her ordered mind that it couldn't have happened any other way. Voyager was a brand new vessel on her maiden voyage to the Badlands. Every known diagnostic had been run and tested again and again and again. Yet somewhere, her warp core design, her engine design and the phaser and torpedo bank designs had been breached.

No persons other than herself and Admiral Krog worked on the final stages of the ship's building. Admiral Krog was the most upstanding and honourable officer she knew. A Klingon imbued with all the honour an integrity of his race, he would instantly assess that such a serious breach of security was not only a violation of Federation law, but downright cowardly. Klingons had no time for cowards.

Krog it couldn't be.

"Doctor, if I could study the schematics of the torpedo banks and programming of the torpedoes," she heard Eldred Dickson say

A scientist, she noted absently as she ended the programme and deleted all files except what was on the data pad. She nodded mutely as she led them to another, larger compound where there were torpedo casings, torpedoes, and computers to study the data pertaining to Voyager. She watched with interest as Harry Kim assisted Dickson with great focus.

"If anyone can crack anything here, Doctor, it will be one of them. They're good," Tom said, his voice tinged with pride.

"Seems like you're quite a little crew yourself. Would you like to look at something while they're busy? I can assure you they won't be disturbed. It's in the dead of night anyway..."

They had hailed her hours before on subspace bands and requested that she set a time for them. Dead of night was the best time.

She smiled as she saw they eyes light up. Like peas in a pod they were. She had heard stories. But they were mainly stories. Yet here walked two young men, about the same age, looking like identical twins. One was the son of Admiral Owen Paris - she grimaced at the thought of that man - and the other the son of one of Starfleet's great medical officers.

She was drawn into their deception, a deception with only the best intentions at heart. They would uncover a plot, for there was a plot, one they showed her was all too real. Someone was behind the destruction of Voyager, sending the spanking new vessel into the Badlands as an added ploy, making her crash seem plausible.

They got into a hover car and soon they were near a docking port on the northern perimeter of the shipyard.

She heard them gasp.

She had their attention.

"Doctor, now there is something to make my heart go boom!" exclaimed Tom Paris.

"No need to, Tom," she heard Nick say. "I've piloted her, remember?"

"Oh no, you haven't."

"It's a replica of the good ship Voyager, Intrepid Class, dummy."

"You know you two could be brothers," she told them as she listened to their light-hearted bickering.

"We are," they chorused.

"I knew it!"

Minutes later they stood on the bridge of the ship.

"She has not been named, gentlemen."

"USS Voyager. No contest."

"Thank you. A certain admiral won't be happy."

"We don't care how a certain admiral feels, Doctor Brahms," Tom said as he seated himself at the conn while Nick took the captain's chair and she sat next to Nick.

"There's something else I want to show you. I have a feeling this ship is embarking on her maiden voyage soon." She entered a few codes on the console between the command chairs, relaying the images to the main viewscreen.

They whistled. They crowed. Nick stood up and joined Tom.

The viewscreen showed cargo bay two, with one shuttle standing in the centre - aloof, stark, sharp yet smooth lines, the bow an apex that flared towards the nacelles in the shape of a dart.

Tom turned to her, his eyes wide with wonder.

"This is my design..."

"Yes. A young Commander Janeway once came to me and told me a very angry young man designed the most beautiful and fastest shuttle in the Federation."

"Me..."

"Yes, Tom. She looked very proud that day."

"I hated her..."

"I know. She said you named the shuttle - "

"The Delta Flyer."

***************** 

TBC


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings apply to this chapter.

* * *

Owen McKenzie Paris loved little boys.

He had no scruples of any kind, had never been never abused as a child, neither in words, emotions or deeds physical and sexual. Born into the aristocracy of Starfleet as the only son of Vice-Admiral Andrew McGowan Paris and doted on by his grandfather, the illustrious McKenzie Paris, he lived a charmed life.

Never had he any specific or unusual fetishes as a young boy, nor did he play with little pink dolls, in some ancient and ill-perceived quarters, an early indication of a boy's particular preferences and leanings in later life.

They encouraged him to be the best, enthused about him in their own circles and in front of him, about their pride in this young blood who would one day become president of the Federation. He would be the best of the best. They could see the signs early on. They had class, they had confidence, they had power.

But Owen Paris knew early on that the power he developed or inherited, could be used as valuable tools, as bargaining chips, as leverage, as blackmail, as hostage over anyone who crossed him. Because he had never been denied anything from his parents and grandparents, being confronted with this from outside his family circle suddenly and sickly became ways in which he could bend those unfortunate individuals to his will.

If he couldn't get what he wanted, he spoiled what he wanted for anyone else.

And that included using little boys as his sex mates, not just to intimidate the child's mother, but to have a great hold over her, her husband, her friends, her lovers. He developed a perverse obsession of making anything that seemed remotely unapproachable or dignified, approachable or undignified and once the perverseness had become part of his desires, it became his way of life.

He tasted his first boy when he was fifteen. The boy was one of the very junior kids in the school attached to his high school. Even at that age, he had begun to be feared and revered. It had been something untried when he took the boy, not sure how his own body would react, but he soon found that it was not unpleasant. The kid had been shocked out of his wits but even then, Owen knew how to intimidate anyone.

Even so, his preferences were never restricted to children. He used his sexual drive to get anything, to barter for anything and to subjugate anyone. His father had been the first to notice and any kind of remonstrations from the parents were met with complete disdain. He had their thirst for power and he was going to get it, use it, abuse it any way he thought he could, because it gave him a kick to see the subjugated squirm. He loved that. Seeing them squirm, leading them on, reeling them in and once he had them, they were in his bed and he between their legs if they were women, or up any hole if they were men or boys.

That first boy way back in his high school year gave him a taste that never ever left him. He couldn't keep himself from wanting to touch a child in public, even his best friends' sons and daughters. The kids had that gamin look about them that caused his loins to quiver with sick lust.

In his years as Captain Paris, he had married Elizabeth Illingsworth who stupidly fell in love with him. But he didn't love her, not in the sense that he felt he could grow old with her. For one, she gave him back his respectability that had started to wane after he had been found with his friend Gamische Bon's young son. He had just been about to pull in the kid - a strange race - Kondaby - with rich profusion of hair and purple eyes that made his heart quicken and his cock grow hard just thinking about the kid. Bon himself had caught him with the boy in his bed, naked and him ready to prod his dick up the kid's tight little ass.

After that, they warned him, told him to get counselling.

Whoever thought a Paris needed counselling? What were they? Blind or something?

So he married Elizabeth Illingsworth in order to create his own supply, his own blood. What could be better than that? Rowena was born first. Elizabeth was happy. Then Thomas was born. And he was happy.

Owen smiled wickedly. Elizabeth eventually killed herself and Rowena, stupid woman. He took good time in letting her die watching him take Tommy, only seven years old then, but already his seasoned toy boy. God, it was good! He had everything now. And the boy, angry like hell at first, kicked up a racket when his mother died. Wanted her to take him with; wanted her to kill him too.

And so he changed his game with Tommy. He cajoled, soothed, offered solace, then gradually drew him into his arms, kissing the kid all over his face, feeling his cock grow hard just thinking how he would spend the next few years with his own son. He had to wait until after Elizabeth and Rowena was buried before he could start up again.

By God, he taught that boy everything, the ungrateful wretch.

Now he wasn't getting younger, although he was a good deal fitter than most men half his age. His crotch still itched whenever he came near any woman whose tits looked inviting to him. He still itched just looking at the boy, eyes blue like Tommy's, hair just as blonde. They still attracted him the most. Though when it came down to it, these days he wasn't going to be choosy. He couldn't be choosy.

Good thing he got rid of his enemies. He had the whole Federation doing his bidding. It took quite some doing killing Voyager and its crew, but he wanted them all out of the way. They weren't going to spoil his fun. Vulcan was as good as taken over again, and the Cardassians were ready to put any woman and boy in his part whenever the whim took him.

But right now he had a particular taste for another boy, and Indiana was a good a place as any to go looking for one. He smiled to himself. Good thing he got Phoebe under his control. Good thing. That one hated her sister like nothing.

********

Phoebe rocked awake when there was a loud banging on the front door. Pulling on her robe, she quickly padded to the room at the end of the passage and peeped through the half open door. There was a soft, muted light next to each single bed and she sighed with relief when she saw they were still fast asleep.

Then she hurried to the front door when the banging increased.

She opened the door.

He stood there, smiling at her and before she could close the door, he was inside.

"Not letting me in tonight, Phoebe?" he said, smiling

His hair had long gone grey, though he was still good looking, still managed in his bizarre and warped way to attract women. He was charismatic, but beneath that charisma lurked the ugly potency of evil. What was he? she always wondered as she looked into his blue eyes. Tall and not so slender anymore, he was strong and she had little power against him.

"Sorry, Owen," she murmured.

"Well, now I am touched. Where are the children?"

She went hot, then ice-cold. His eyes were steel, narrowed as he appraised her. She moved so that she stood between him and the long passage that led to their room. He touched her breast, squeezed it hard. She winced, instinctively moving away from the pain. Then she felt herself pushed away, and watched him stride down the passage. She followed him quickly. 

"Owen, please...leave them. They are sleeping, for God's sake..."

But he wasn't listening.

He stopped at the door that stood ajar. Because she was much smaller than Owen, she could actually see past him, from under his arm because one hand rested high against the door jamb.

The boy was sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes sleepily, his blonde hair tousled. When he looked up, his eyes were very blue. She heard Owen give an inward moan, knew what was happening even though she stood behind him. He was aroused. Just watching the kid got him hard.

"Ethan, son, are you awake?" Owen asked.

But Ethan didn't answer. Lainey was still sleeping soundly in the other bed. Ethan looked scared, kept his eyes on her.

"Ethan, honey," she said as she dipped under Owen's arms and rushed to his bed, quickly thumping his pillow and making him settle down again. "Go back to sleep, okay?"

"Grandpa is here..."

"Yes..."

She knew Owen was watching her from the door, knew he was biding his time. As she leaned over Ethan, she whispered, "I left the kitchen door open. Take Lainey with you. You know where to go, okay? I'll take Grandpa to my room."

Her words were hushed, barely above a whisper. But Ethan, all of eight years old, listened only and blinked instead of nodding. She patted his cheek. "Good boy..."

She turned and walked to the door, calling for very low illumination as she reached Owen. She pressed against him, slid her hand between them and cupped his crotch. He was hard, the entire area boiling with heat. She pressed into him.

"Let me make you comfortable, Owen," she murmured lasciviously, kneading him gently, letting him groan as he began to take in her smell. "Very, very comfortable..."

"Hmmm. I could do with some comfort," he murmured against her ear, pressing her close to him and stepping into the hall, "before I enjoy my dessert."

She pushed the door close behind her and walked with Owen to her room, near the front of the house. By the time she reached her door, she had already removed his jacket and her dress was lying on the floor. He groaned as he lifted her in his arms and kicked her door open.

Her threw her down on the bed. While she removed the rest of her things, never taking her eyes off him, always keeping him in her line of vision, he removed his pants, boots, underwear until his engorged cock popped out, swinging from the force with which he pulled his pants down. He had a mass of chest hair and though she recoiled, she couldn't keep her eyes off his thick shaft that came ever closer to her until he stood right against, flicking his cock against her face..

She had to smell him, smell the strong maleness that emanated from him. The distended tip throbbed. She took him in her mouth, worked her way up and down his shaft. He gave a low moan. It was what he liked, his form of foreplay. Taking the erect organ in one hand, she lifted it, and began to kiss and lick the base, all the way to the tip and down to the base again.

When he had enough - she knew it by the way he grabbed a clump of her hair and pulled her head back - she sucked him, moving quickly in and out to draw his first orgasm from him. It was soft, controlled, the way he climaxed into her mouth, holding her head tightly against him so that she could feel the fluid spurt into her, forcing her to swallow.

"Carry on, honey. Keep me diverted..." he ordered as she worked him into stiffness again, grabbing his butt cheeks and pressing him closer. Her mind whirled from the sensation of holding him, teasing him into erection again.

When he was hard again, he pulled her out. It was a relief to have her mouth free of him. But the relief was short-lived.

It was a good thing, she decided, that he had arrived so late this time. He flipped her on to her stomach.

"Come now, just like a doggie, go on all fours for me, Phoebe..."

Sighing, she drew up her knees, spread them, pulling a pillow for her elbows to brace and her head to have a little breathing space between her face and the mattress. She arched her back inwards or downwards into a sharp curve that threw her buttocks high and cause her pussy to present in full flair for him.

But these times Owen was never interested in her pussy as he grabbed her butt cheeks and pressed them open. He also never used any lubricant on her. His tip was big, primed and prodding her hole until she felt it give and he slid in. Owen gave a loud groan as he swiftly impaled her. Her body rock forward from the force. Phoebe bit her lip as she prepared for his onslaught.

Tonight he wasn't gentle. He never was gentle with her, but tonight was different. There was an urgency, more than just the diversion away from Ethan in the way he fucked her hole, burying his nails in her skin as he held her fast, pulled out to his tip and then plunged in. He grunted, an old man fucking and grunting like a pig. Her body rocked, but he kept on until her pussy began to swell from the way he kept up the pounding. She wanted him there too, but asking was never good, so she dripped while his cock rammed into her.

Her orgasm died as he climaxed, the let-down so fierce that she wanted to cry of the frustration. He collapsed over her, breathing heavily until he calmed again and pulled slowly out of her. Only then he flipped her on her back, opened her legs and buried his mouth in her cunt. She cried out at the touch, building up again until she spilled into his mouth.

And so she kept him busy for the rest of the night. She never dozed off, always keeping her eyes open, always working her way into a climax or faking one when she needed to. But she wanted to draw every angry, depraved seed from his body. She wanted to drain him until he was dry and exhausted. On and on she kept him with her, always keeping her eyes on him. He groaned, he squealed like a pig at times. He grunted, crowed loudly when he came, then kept grunting more as she maintained his erection. Then when he remained limp, she'd pull his head into her pussy and coaxed him to suck her until she cried out opened-eyed from the teasing orgasm that mostly stayed at the edge of the cliff.

In the morning, when the sun brought with it its first rays, lighting the early sky into dark blues until they became grey, then turning golden orange, she watched him get up, dress himself and then pat her pussy.

"I have to go now. Trouble at the office. Heard some rebels are on their way there..."

"I'll be here for you..."

"I know you will, bitch in heat..."

***********

Phoebe rose sluggishly as Owen closed the front door. She followed him to the door, still naked, watching from the porch as he disappeared towards the small launch pad where his shuttle touched down the previous night.

She breathed a huge sigh of relief as she returned to her bedroom, began clearing things away, spraying her room to get rid of the smell, opened the window wide to let in the fresh morning air. She put on her nightie again and donned her robe and slippers. Then she made her way to the kitchen door that led to the backyard.

The commbadge always lay on the counter just by the door and when she hit it, the low static told her it was activated. In the distance the shed was visible. It was a little lighter now.

"Phoebe to Ethan..."

"We're okay, Aunt Phoebe. Can we come out now?"

"You're cleared, Ethan. Hey, Lainey, good morning!"

She stood with her arms crossed as she waited for them to run from the shed. Two eight year olds, Ethan who was blonde and blue-eyed, and Lainey who had pitch black hair, bangs snipped evenly and hair bobbing in her neck.

When they reached her, her eyes burned for the first time with the tears she hadn't wanted Owen Paris to see.

Once again, she prevented Owen from getting to them.

She closed her eyes briefly, thinking of all the years she had hated her sister without ever understanding why.

************ 

TBC


	25. Chapter 25

* * *

They were back on the Neruk making their way to Earth. Kathryn and Chakotay now shared a suite, the other Voyager survivors again in their assigned quarters. Tuvok, with his wife T'Pel and four children joined them as well.

"It is our wish to leave Vulcan and journey with you, Captains Janeway and Chakotay," he stated impassively.

"You don't know what our lot will be, Tuvok. We may have to return to the Badlands."

T'Pel spoke, her eyes slanted, beautiful and aloof

"Tuvok has spoken that there is much work to be done in the Badlands. We wish to be of service."

"You are already doing a great job," Chakotay replied, knowing that T'Pel was also a scientist at the Institute.

"My bond mate will always serve under you, Captain Janeway. I follow him. It is what we wish," she replied, looking at her children.

Chakotay had nodded, knowing that it was pointless to argue with a Vulcan. Now they had six of them. No, eight of them, he amended mentally. Another Vulcan with his mate also wished to join. Chakotay shook his head in some sort of disbelief. Vorik and T'Resa looked eager, young and ready to tackle their new horizons. Suddenly everyone thought the Badlands was a good place to be. It wasn't. It was ridden with plasma turbulence, bad clouds and the occasional displacement waves from which they kept very, very far. Already a Cardassian vessel, one Starfleet vessel and a few smaller Maquis ships had been sucked in by the displacement waves never to be heard of again.

It was bad in the Badlands, yet the Vulcans and a few other ignorant people thought it was a good place to be. He knew that he would be a hunted man, that his iniquities would follow him everywhere. Last night, in their suite he'd oozed green slime again, had shuddered for hours while Kathryn tended to him. He'd sobbed brokenly at all the things he'd done and knew that whatever he was going to do to  amend for those reprehensible act, would never in creation be enough. But he was ready. There was work to be done in the Badlands.

"Good. Our road is difficult. I have committed many crimes. I am not a good man - "

"Your memories were taken from you with force and evil implanted in you. That makes you a...victim, Captain Chakotay."

They had many things on their plate. He had told Kathryn about the data pad in his small trunk and she had given it to Paris, Locarno, Kim and Dickson. The four of them were already somewhere on Earth  or in its orbit investigating his theories. Only, they weren't theories. It was blatant evidence of the murder of a ship. He'd seen how the Liberty, when they fired, only strafed Voyager, after which it seemed explosions cascaded on the vessel. That was when he'd transported all lifesigns from the stricken vessel. He'd been bad then. Closing his eyes, he tried to blank out images of his own depravity.

He gave a great sigh. Somewhere they were to meet up with Paris, Nick and the others again. But right now, the most urgent task was to get to Phoebe.

He remembered how Phoebe had looked scared that day when Owen Paris had eradicated his memories. She'd been there and even though she'd laughed at times when he screamed in pain, he'd sensed that she was scared. Either that, or Owen Paris had intimidated her like he'd intimidated everyone in his path. Was there something else they didn't know? Was Phoebe really that bad? Kathryn had always spoken of how Phoebe resented her and hated that their father showered Kathryn with so much greater affection than his own natural born daughter.

And once again, Phoebe lay at the heart of their most important mission -  their life, their hearts and souls.

"Kathryn..." he murmured as she shifted uneasily in her sleep. She had been restless all night and he had kept awake, comforting her.

"I'll be fine, Chakotay," she whispered, but she had given a soft sob and he knew that she was crying, trying not to make a sound or to upset or disturb him.

He pulled her closer and wanted to die again from the familiar feel of having her in his arms, smelling her, tasting her. For two years he couldn't remember. Two years in which he'd committed all manner of foul atrocities. Two years that had started right here in the Alpha quadrant. Even if he committed those crimes because he was "not himself" as Kathryn claimed the very first time she came into his life again, he was still accountable for them. How could he look Megan Delaney again in the eyes? The girl, when she had boarded the Neruk, had been scared to look at him, and hadn't known how to react.

Saying "I'm sorry" didn't nearly make things remotely right. He sighed. He could only look at her, and the words had somehow choked in his throat, refused to exit as complete and utter expressions of remorse.

"I know you want to say you're sorry, Captain Chakotay," she said with the saddest eyes imaginable. "It is just still so difficult for me to - to..."

She had stammered, then rushed away in tears.

At least, he thought not without bitterness, she didn't scream her outrage at him, or swore that she would get even, or take revenge.

"Give them all time," Kathryn had told him tearfully in their suite. The porthole had become suddenly the only anchor, holding his hands flats against it, and staring into the darkness without speaking. He had been uncommunicative and Kathryn remained stoic. Whatever he was going to be subjected to - scorn, derision, hatred, naked aggression, she would have to take it with him and it wasn't fair.

Yet, he couldn't leave her now that she found him again. He just couldn't, even though he believed that the best way for him to move forward now, was to move without her, to save her pain, humiliation, embarrassment.

But Kathryn had come a long way to find him.

Almost, almost, she had died too. If he hadn't seen that starboard nacelle blowing first, he would never have had the time to transport the few he could manage to get on the Liberty. Before his very eyes - he had been too long in Starfleet, too long a tactical expert not to see that the ship was under attack, not from the Maquis, but Starfleet itself - he knew that the ship was being sabotaged. They meant to destroy and kill the entire crew.

He knew it was Starfleet, sensed it instinctively. The ship had announced itself as Voyager under the command of Captain Janeway.

He had stupidly asked Kathryn, "How do you know my name?"

But Starfleet used an old Cardassian combat ploy -  leave no survivors. They tend to haunt if they survive.

And that's when he began the recording and started to transport anyone still alive.

Kathryn was among them. He closed his eyes tightly, tried to shut out the images of how he beat her with his belt. He saw again the way her body shook, bounced off the mattress, the way she just turned her face away from him and let the blows rain on her body. He had torn much of her flesh from her that day.

Something had driven him to do that, something about Kathryn that wouldn't leave him from the moment she looked into his eyes in the cargo bay of the Liberty. She was going to be his undoing. And just how much of his undoing was later manifest in the way his body started to ooze, the headaches, the feeling of faintness, of breathlessness and feeling he would collapse at any second.

Now, all he wanted to do was to atone, to pay penance without knowing how to. His heart was dark with pain, deep, brooding tones of unholy terror that he knew would haunt him forever. She needed only to know that he kept awake so that he could give her comfort and not because he was afraid of ever falling asleep again.

In his sleep the Megans, the Tuvoks, the Dicksons, the Jennys, the countless young women and men he violated, killed, sold into slavery, would visit him and taunt him with their memories.

He sighed. Just so long Kathryn thought it was so she could rest. He was okay with that.

He kissed Kathryn softly, felt how her breathing had become even and restful. And so he lay holding her, staring out the porthole where the dimness of the distant stars waved and pointed fingers at him.

**********

"We must thank you, Captain," Kathryn said to the Neruk's Commander, "for bringing us here. However, I must impose on your generosity again."

"Anything that you wish, Captain Janeway."

"The rest of the survivors must please remain on board and not contact their families. I understand that we have all been listed as dead with the destruction of my ship. Also - "

"We concur that it would not be in your interest for the moment to make your presence known."

"Thank you. I am glad you understand."

Chakotay was glad when the two of them could beam down. They were both in Starfleet uniform, a move they thought would not be too much of a shock as wearing Maquis gear would be. Then they could be phasered out of existence once and for all for the second and third and fourth time. They had a medical tricorder, a scientific tricorder, one phaser and one site to site transporter between them. It would have to do.

"Ready?" he asked her, his heart thumping so wildly that he wondered if he was going to collapse again.

"My heart is pounding in my ears," she admitted as she looked up at him.

"Oh, Kathryn, we're almost over the last hurdles..."

He saw how her lips moved as if in prayer. Was she imploring a higher power to let everything work out for them? Because he had no knowledge of what happened to Kathryn after he had been purged of his memories, he had to rely on her to guide him. Somewhere there was another story to tell and at the core of that story lay Phoebe Janeway.

"Indiana is beautiful this time of the year..." he murmured as he looked around him, the  autumn leaves creating golden carpets all over the grounds.

"Oh, God...please help us today..." Kathryn pleaded.

The homestead stood in the distance, the tall shed closer to them than the main house. They could see smoke spiralling from the chimney. For the first time they were aware of the cold. His toes felt like ice blocks. But even the cold didn't deter him from moving closer and closer, keeping behind Kathryn.

But Kathryn wasn't rushing. It seemed to him that she was afraid to take another step and another step towards their destination.

Then she stopped in her tracks as a backdoor opened and a figure appeared. They were standing perhaps twenty, twenty five metres away, but he could see the likeness between Phoebe and Kathryn. At least Kathryn's instincts brought her to the right place - her home in Indiana.

Phoebe stepped on to the back porch. They moved forward.

"Hello, Phoebe..." he heard Kathryn say. Phoebe stood, unmoving, her arms crossed.

"What do you want."

"You know why I am here, Phoebe. Please, let me see them."

"You're dead. To me. To them."

"Owen is a sick man, Phoebe. Surely you must know that?"

For a moment Chakotay saw the flicker of something across Phoebe's attractive features. She knew about Owen. She was his accomplice. He should go and strike her down with one blow

"They're mine, Kathryn. Owen gave them to me."

"He had no right. No right at all. He - "

"Phoebe," he started, trying to give Kathryn time to collect herself. "Owen used them as hostages to get Kathryn to come after me. That's true. She knew I was still alive. She knew that it wasn't necessary to enter the Badlands. But Owen used threats, used extortion to get Voyager to enter the Badlands. He blew up the ship, Phoebe. He meant to have every single crewmember on Voyager killed. Everyone, you hear? That way he would have you and the children to himself. Surely you know what kind of man he is, what he did to Tom?"

Phoebe's eyes had widened when he spoke of Voyager's destruction. She looked uncertain, way too much under Owen Paris's control, still too much in his clutches. Already their appearance was a shock. Certainly she never expected to see Kathryn again.

Poor girl.

Then the backdoor flew open.

Two children moved past Phoebe and stepped off the porch.

Chakotay heard Kathryn's rapid intake of breath. He heard his own painful, sharp gasp that seemed to originate from deep in his chest.

Their lives, their souls, the reason for their very existence stood before them. Eight years old, born on Ketarcha, the only place he and Kathryn ever felt safe from Owen Paris.

Ethan. Blonde, blue-eyed like his mother, like Tom and Nick.

Lainey. Tanned, black haired, blue-eyed, resembling him.

Kathryn's voice seemed to come from a great distance to him.

"And what shall we call our babies, Chakotay?"

"Names not associated with family..."

"I like 'Ethan'", she declared firmly as she kissed her baby boy.

"Lainey will be our little girl's name then," said he, kissing the top of Lainey's head.

"Oh, Chakotay, how will we keep them safe? Please?"

"We fight for them, Kathryn. One day, we will emerge victorious..."

The children stood just off the porch, still in their pyjamas and gowns. Chakotay felt the prick in his eyes, the tears that fell without decorum, the sudden blurring of his vision as the boy stepped hesitantly forward, touching him with uncertain fingers.

"Papa?"

And out of the corner of his eye he saw how Lainey flew into her mother's arms.

"Mommy!"

******************** 

TBC


	26. Chapter 26

* * *

Tom Paris sat in the passenger section of the shuttle Tiberius while Nick piloted. He had been right on so many counts about his father being the source of all unhappiness, all devious productions, all manner of evil, all sordid baseness of character with no sign of softening. The destruction Voyager was the final straw. He wasn't going to get away, especially now that they knew the truth. Especially when there were survivors to give evidence of that truth.

The man had no honour, no respect, no dignity, yet all those – or lack of them – were cloaked under masks of the aristocracy, of good breeding and good bearing. That Nick was his brother came as no surprise to him. That Kathryn was his sister evoked only the realisation that she had never seduced his father and that it was in fact the opposite.

Owen Paris violated her mother and Kathryn was born as a result of that. An innocent Kathryn, an innocent Gretchen Janeway whom, when he thought rationally about things now, was most probably poisoned by Owen Paris. Poison - his favourite elixir for murder.

But when you're a kid of seven and your father was lying behind you in his bed, holding you as if you were a woman, touching you, raping you, then all things he mouthed in those moments of his sexual ecstasy became believable to you. He believed them because it was the only way he could, as a little boy, wrap his brain around the evil cunning and the sordid business of incest of Owen McKenzie Paris. It was the only way he could even remotely assign a word – "justify" -  what his father did to him.

Yes, he thought with great anger and bitterness. He believed his father. When he was in pain, screaming at the forced entry and harsh guttural sounds his father made while violating him, all he could think of was that Gretchen Janeway and Kathryn Janeway and later, her sister Phoebe, were women who seduced him, then withdrew their favours and that was why Owen turned his affections – unnatural affections – to his little boy.

At seven he became good at believing and pretending. At seven he learned to endure the pain and unlawful entry which later became simply whenever he was sad, or angry, the inducement to have his Daddy rape him again and again.

Later he became good. Later he enjoyed the fucking and the grunting and the spilling of seed in his ass, in his mouth. Later he enjoyed taking the huge cock in his mouth and any urge to bite through the hardness quickly dissipating when Owen worked his way in fondling his little penis until it trembled stiffly and spilled.

Tom bit back an angry expletive.

At the back of his mind, he knew that there had to be a truth somewhere. Somewhere deep, hidden under layers and layers of his conscience, he knew that what his father had done , was still doing, was wrong.

He couldn't wait to grow up. Yet, even as a high schooler, whenever Owen Paris had an urge, it was to his son he turned. Tom would sleep in his bed, murmur sleepily when he felt another weight bearing down on it and then allowed his father to fuck him.

Even Owen Paris said he got good at it.

Tom bit back another angry expletive, trying to blank out the memories.

Yet he knew, as would any child systematically reduced to a sex object by a man who abused such positions of trust and gave the name "father" the ugliest association on earth, that he would grow up and be a man.

Even in his teens, Owen Paris had no idea how his own son played him. Take him in, play with him, fuck him, letting him fuck you, reduce a grown man – Starfleet's most revered admiral – to cry like a baby in the throes of sex.

One day, Tom knew, the boy was going to become a man. And that man was going to be his father's downfall.

There was only one journey Owen McKenzie Paris could take within the next forty eight hours: the journey to hell and there was no coming back. Tom had no compunction. He had none when he killed Jenny Delaney. He had none when he killed Torres.

Owen McKenzie Paris might very well be a total stranger.

Doctor Leah Brahms had uttered a cry of dismay when Harry and Eldred Dickson showed her their findings. It was Eldred in fact, who showed her the specs of the torpedoes – ones he designed – and showed her just how the programming had been tampered with.

"And from quite a distance, too, Doctor Brahms," he said, shaken that his findings were correct.

"Yes," Harry agreed, "the programming had been done from this office."

Harry showed the specs of Starfleet Headquarters, and pinpointed the location from where the encryptions had been done.

"Admiral Paris's office?" she asked, visibly shocked. "But Tom, he's your father!"

"Aye, Doctor. And what a father," he had replied bitterly. "See here? Right from his office."

"But anyone wishing to break into the programming of Voyager's computers or any of her critical systems, must have a level ten clearance if the ship is not in orbit or before launch date. Admiral Krog and I are the only ones with that clearance level for any vessel pre-launch."

"Well, it's here, in black and white as they say, Doctor," he told her.

"Do you realise what you're suggesting?" she asked.

This time it was Nick who spoke.

"Doctor, we realise all too well what a serious indictment it is. But it is true. For certain reasons – some of them personal – Admiral Paris, our sweet father, sabotaged Voyager to make it look like she was destroyed by the Maquis in the Badlands. Everything is here as you can see. The timing. It took Voyager two weeks from Deep Space Nine to reach the Badlands. The torpedoes were set to self-destruct when the first phaser fire within the plasma clouds came from the enemy ship. No matter where the Liberty hit Voyager, that first strike was to set off the first of the explosions."

"And, you say that Captain Chakotay knew this?"

"He sensed or suspected it at least. That's how he came to transport the remaining crew from Voyager."

"I…understand…" she said, her voice thoughtful. "What are you going to do now?"

"Well, Doctor," Nick said as he straightened up, "he must face the consequences, mustn't he?"

Tom thought Doctor Brahms looked relieved and he wondered absently if his father had made a play for the attractive engineer as well. It was something O. M. Paris would do. Approach the unapproachable…

He sighed, giving Harry a quick glance.

Saying 'sorry' wasn't going to be enough.

*******************

"We're here," Nick said as the shuttle touched down on the transporter pads at the far end of Starfleet Headquarters. There weren't many people about and Tom was glad that they could at least arrive without it being too obvious. They were simply officers of the USS Audensberg returning briefly for a well-earned break and to stop by Headquarters before leaving again. Even their commbadges were set on the identities of some of the junior officers of the Audensberg.

A useful camouflage. Owen Paris wasn't a stupid man.

"Have you prepared the message?" Harry asked, looking eager enough to be drawn into their little subterfuge.

"Got it right here," Tom replied, holding up the PADD and double checking that he could actually see the information, touch the thing for its physical presence. They had spent some time on Mars preparing and now they were ready.

"Good. I'm going to have to override the codes to his office door, understand?"

What was Harry's problem?

"That's why you're here, Harry."

"Dickson, ready?" asked Nick.

Dickson nodded, holding a small spray can ready.

"Good," Tom said, smiling. "Daddy changes his codes every week. A precautionary measure. No one else does it. One can see he's paranoid about being found out."

"Fine. I'll break it," Harry promised, looking aggrieved that they doubted him.

"Just checking."

Tom sighed. It was going to take a while before Harry trusted him again. He couldn't get the man out of his head, or out of his system for that matter; he knew he was falling headlong into a chasm where the young ensign enjoyed making love to the man who raped him first time round. But he didn't dream up Harry's responses. The man was as attracted to him as he was to Harry. He had sensed it that first day in the Liberty's cargo bay. Tom bit his lip.

His father had spoiled him for women, had drawn out of him every manner of response to another male person. It wasn't going to change. He was convinced of that. He couldn't stand Torres even though she threw her pussy at him from time to time.

Harry touched him, evoked something elemental in him. No, Tom thought, there wasn't going to be a woman around who would touch him in that way.

But any pursuance of those feelings, those possibilities would have to wait. Harry was busy frigging the door of Owen Paris's office and only three minutes later, the door slid open.

"Open Sesame…" Nick whispered as they stepped inside.

"When will he be back here?" Dickson asked, looking around furtively after he had sprayed the panel outside where Harry's fingers had touched it. He had to do the same everywhere in the office where their hands touched.

"He's at Palings right now - "

"Palings?" Harry asked.

"Our family home, or what's left of my family. Anyway, he will make his way here not long after he wakes up."

"Ah..."

"Yes. Nick, how far are you?" he asked.

Nick turned to him, graced him a wicked grin.  "Almost done. Your voice is similar to Daddy's voice. I'm just piggybacking yours over his, mixing it smoothly so no one will know that it was Tom Paris who spoke and not Daddy."

Tom wanted to laugh at the way Nick pronounced 'daddy' precisely as if it were the worst swear word in the Federation. Dickson and Harry waited. Tom sat down at the vid-com. Harry had the imager ready while Nick and Dickson prepared to lip synch on Owen Paris's face - a recent archived recording of Admiral Paris. Tom  gave a deep sigh, his heart beating erratically. He breathed in and out slowly.

"It's now or never..." he murmured as he switched on the PADD.

He had the text memorised, so he looked straight into the imager Harry placed strategically on the desk. Anyone watching on a vid-com elsewhere would see Owen Paris's face with the sharp, steel grey eyes, the thin lips, the greying hairs brushed smoothly, neatly backwards. They would see his admiral's dress uniform, the rank insignia on the collar, the gold-over-black bands on the sleeves. They would see his grim appearance, the stern look, a look that would change as the message was read. They would never know that way Admiral Paris's lips moved, that it was overlayed on an older, different, completely unrelated message. Those movements were synchronised with what he was going to read.

He hoped it would work. He prayed it would work.

"Ready?" Nick asked, his face serious for once.

He nodded, looked one last time at Harry, at Nick, at Dickson, before he looked straight in the imager.

Then he began to recite the words:

"The President of the Federation, members of the Federation Council, all office bearers of Starfleet Command..."

 ***************  

Morning at Palings didn't bring him the satisfaction he usually experienced after a night with Phoebe Janeway. The bitch had again outwitted him, smartly forming a firewall for Kathryn's kids. He had been itching in his loins and he had been wanting to taste Ethan for a good while. But every time that bitch in heat beat him to it.

It was time he sacked her. Then again, where was he going to recruit another virgin like Phoebe who had been just as scared as her mother had been when he fucked her senseless? But time with Phoebe had been spent teaching her everything she knew about sex and its dark perversions so that she bested any other woman he casually fucked in their bedrooms or in his office while their husbands were away. That, and a healthy dose of intimidation usually got them to comply. It got Phoebe to comply. The bitch could whack up a pretty storm squatting on his cock in his office while he fucked her.

Phoebe was easy. He played on her hatred for her sister and it worked to his advantage whenever she became intractable, not wanting to play with him.

"Just think how Kathryn would resent that I'm loving you this way, sweet Phoebe," he would purr in her ear. "Just think how much you can tell her how good I can be..."

And then Phoebe, quite angry, would slide under him and make his body tingle with delight for days afterwards. After Tom left, Phoebe became him, and her tight little ass lured him, enticed him just as much as Tom's did.

But he had a taste for Ethan and Ethan was as scared as hell. Not only that, his aunt suddenly got an attack of morals,  ready to front for the kid. Maybe he was getting old. Phoebe got quite protective over the kids. One night he'd seen them sleep and just as he was going to take Ethan out of the room, the bitch in heat came and flamed him all up with her seductive purring. He'd soon forgotten he wanted the boy as Phoebe worked him this way and that and kept him very, very busy.

But sweet mother of God, he wanted that boy. Just think how Kathryn would have minded that! But Kathryn was dead. So was that damn fool husband of hers. He had made certain that they were out of the way. Now the kids belonged to him and Phoebe and pretty soon Phoebe wasn't going to be enough to prevent him getting into Ethan's pants.

A quick shower and he'd be off to Indiana. It was time he taught Phoebe and Kathryn's kids a lesson. This time he was going to force the kid and force Phoebe and Lainey to watch. Yes, teach her a lesson. After that, he'd go to the office and see what's up. Some Maquis dissidents had gotten word out about rebels making their way to Earth. He had to take care of that.

But first, coffee and the daily news. He grinned to himself. He had an itching cock that stiffened just at the thought of Ethan who looked like Tommy, but he wanted to see what's going on in the Federation. Maybe Quark got married, or something, to a naked Ferengi woman.

He sat down after his got his steaming coffee and had taken his first sip before switching it on.

Then Owen Paris frowned.

He saw his own face. A sad, own face that looked like it was close to tears. A sad, own face that talked with his voice.

He frowned, then he turned ice-cold. Ice, ice cold. All colour drained from him. His blood vanished. He was nothing but a shell - flesh and bone that could see and hear.

"...that I have plotted to kill the President of the Federation. My time is near and this is my confession to the world. I am no longer able to keep this hidden from you. It has been too much, too much to bear this terrible burden and torment. I have falsely accused several individuals of crimes they have never committed. I have committed crimes against the persons of Captain Chakotay, and have wilfully turned him into a killing machine by altering his memories..."

"Oh, my God... This cannot be..." Owen Paris whispered, the words emitting as puffs from his lips. His eyes bulged, remained open, but he felt how all the tiny capillaries crack and bled. He was transfixed, paralysed with shock. He sat, the coffee cup tilted from his lifeless fingers and spilled over his pants. He never felt the way his skin burned.

The voice - his voice, his face - droned on. He had absolutely no doubt that every person sitting at their vid-coms was listening, watching.

"I sent the vessel USS Voyager on her maiden voyage to the Badlands and destroyed the ship through remote controlled self-destruct sequence of her photon torpedoes. I have killed the entire crew of Voyager. It is my pain. It is my indictment that I am guilty of committing these crimes.... It is my torment forever..."

"No...no!"

"I cannot lie any longer," his own, sad face continued. "Captain Chakotay uncovered a plot that I have engaged the Cardassians to destroy a member of our Federation - the homeworld and all the inhabitants of Vulcan. For that I took action against him in the moist heinous way possible."

And the real own face, own mouth of Owen McKenzie Paris:

"I must go...I must stop this... Who on earth is responsible for this?" he wondered as he tried to stand up, his body suddenly stiff. But he couldn't keep his eyes off the screen.

"And therefore I hold no one responsible but myself. I cannot face the world otherwise. It is my decision to bring to end this..."

"No!"

"This useless life..."

He didn't bother to switch off the vid-com as he rushed outside and ran to the shuttle that was always ready for take-off barely fifty metres from the house. Within a minute he was airborne. He was blinded his fury and confounded by what had happened. That wasn't him there in his office. It only looked like him. It only sounded like him. Fear sat in him and began to eat at him from the inside. He would never admit to such deeds. Never! Never!

That he was accountable, guilty of every one of them.

Conspiracy!

Someone was going to pay for this.

When he touched down, it took him seconds to realise he was at the farmhouse in Indiana. He had his phaser ready.

Someone was going to pay. Someone who played firewall long enough. Before the Federation Law Enforcement people came for him he was going to get her.

He was not prepared for the welcoming party that met him just outside the house.

There they stood - Kathryn Janeway, his daughter by a woman he raped. Chakotay whose memories he purged violently from him. Tuvok, who helped Kathryn steal the transponder he had hidden so carefully.

Ethan Janeway.

Lainey Janeway.

Phoebe Janeway.

"Phoebe!"

But Phoebe stood her ground. She looked resolute. Her eyes were bloodshot like she had been crying, but she look resolute, pursing her lips as he approached her. Who then but Chakotay and Kathryn to push her back so that when he reached Phoebe, they were standing, protecting her and the kids?

"You're dead, Phoebe. This is a conspiracy!"

"It's over, Owen," he heard Kathryn say. "There's no more running for you. It's over!"

That was when he got blind as he pulled the phaser, set on kill and fired at Ethan and Lainey.

"No!'

Phoebe lay on the ground in front of them, writhing in agony.

Didn't he kill her?

*********

TBC


	27. Chapter 27

* * *

"Children, go inside," Chakotay  said softly as he kept his eyes on Owen Paris. The man looked completely stunned, blown away by the same news they had seen half an hour earlier and which the entire congregation of the United Federation of Planets witnessed. The man was doomed.

Down, but apparently not out. 

He waited until Kathryn had helped Phoebe into the house and the children followed them. On Paris's face the shock had replaced the bewilderment he showed when the phaser blast didn't kill Phoebe. The phaser dangled loosely in the murderer's hand, like an olden time pistol swinging in his finger.

Chakotay couldn't decide what shocked Owen Paris more: the phaser which by some strange quirk of fate had been pre-set to stun instead of kill, or whether seeing Kathryn alive.

Maybe it was seeing Kathryn alive. Official communiqués had gone out a week ago about Voyager's destruction at the hands of the Maquis and the death of its entire crew. That was Paris's doing.

Now, not only did Kathryn stand before him alive and well, but so was her husband right there by her side. Not only did Phoebe form the protective vanguard to their children, but so did their parents. Owen Paris was halted in his onslaught.

They had all heard the news, all seen his face on the vid-com, all took in his confession. Chakotay knew that somewhere Tom, Nick, Harry and Dickson had something to do with it. Not something, he amended, but a major role to play, and that role was not over yet. Paris had rushed to Indiana meaning to kill Phoebe, thinking that she might have had something to do with it, or instigated his own sons against him.

Phoebe, however, was innocent.

Their own arrival had shocked Kathryn's younger sister just as much, although they had managed to convince her of their own sincerity, convinced her that Owen Paris would break his word and renege on any shady promise he made. Phoebe had been playing tough with them, not wanting to hand the children over to them. The children had other ideas when they heard their mother and father and had run outside, throwing themselves into their parents' arms.

Phoebe's toughness was only on the surface. Chakotay sensed she was secretly glad of their arrival and intervention.

Now the man stood, and Chakotay had the idea of "almost broken" as if Paris still had a few aces up his sleeve. Under normal circumstances he would have had something to throw back at them, but not now. It was the end for him.

The end.

And it wasn't going to be a good end. Moreover, he was finished with killing and maiming and violating. He wasn't going to kill Paris, even if the man expected him to 'act within character'.

"How did you get here?" Owen Paris asked, stepping back when Chakotay moved towards him.

"Caught your little game, Paris. Managed to save ten crew, didn't you know? And now we've come to get the children you stole from us. My memory has been restored. You're dead, Paris."

The older man moved further and further back until he reached his shuttle, pointed the phaser at Chakotay. Then, realising it was set on stun, fiddled to set it to kill.

"Oh, no, you don't," Chakotay hissed as he quickly grabbed the phaser. "Get out of here. You're finished."

"Kill me," Paris demanded. "Kill me. It's what you do so well, Chakotay."

"No, it's what Owen Paris does so well. You turned me into a beast, but no more, understand? Who do you think is going to do you the favour of killing you? You'd like that, don't you? So that you can get the last laugh. When you get into your shuttle, just turn on your vid-com, will you?"

Paris's lips quivered with anger. The hair, once so neat and smooth, looked dishevelled, the eyes filled with the classic look of fear. By the time he got to Headquarters, Law Enforcement would be on its way.

"This isn't the end, Chakotay," the older man threatened.

Paris was bluffing. He looked terrified. He couldn't feel sorry for the man. Owen Paris tried to kill them, tried to kill their love, robbed them of their identity, their loyalty to the Federation, their lives, their children. Especially their children.

Ethan had been scared of Owen Paris all his life, and it was going to take a long time for his son to trust people again, especially sick old fucks like his grandfather. The children called Owen "grandpa" most probably on his own instruction and that of Phoebe.

Which reminded him that his family was still inside the house.

He watched the Paris shuttle take off, smiled grimly at the thought of what the man was going to see on his vid-com. Chakotay knew that what they saw on the news earlier must have been the work of Tom Paris and company. It was what he had hoped they would do once Kathryn had given them the PADD with the recording of Voyager's destruction.

Kathryn lived. It was a miracle. They had their children back. That too, was a miracle. They still recognised him, and Ethan had been hesitant, not certain that the man he was touching was really his father.

"I dreamed every day of you, Papa…"

"Me too," Lainey chimed in. "Every day. Papa, Aunt Phoebe kept Grandpa away from us…"

That had been the first realisation that Phoebe Janeway wasn't what they thought she was. She had been coerced, intimidated exactly the same way Owen Paris touched every other person in his orbit.

Phoebe couldn't have hated Kathryn so much and in the next instant would die for the children, protect them with her life. And what if his phaser had been set on kill? Chakotay's heart turned cold at the thought of what Owen Paris might have done with the children, especially Ethan.

Ethan who looked so remarkably like Tom Paris and Nick Locarno.

He turned and walked back into the house. The children were in the kitchen, fixing breakfast for them. He and Kathryn – who hadn't seen them in a year – had learned quickly that the children were self-sufficient.

More than that…

Late last night, when no one wanted to sleep, not even Phoebe who had rallied and hugged her sister eventually, Ethan had tugged at his uniform.

"Papa…"

The boy blushed deep red. Chakotay thought his heart would rip out of his chest from some unknown fear. Fear that Ethan was Tom. But Ethan had something on his mind.

"What is it, son?" he asked.

"I disabled Grandpa's phasers. It is permanently on stun, even though Grandpa will think he set it on kill."

"You did that?" he asked, surprised.

"Aunt Phoebe told me to learn everything I could. I transported us to the shed when Grandpa came and Aunt Phoebe took him to her room."

Aunt Phoebe took Owen Paris to her room.

It told him and Kathryn everything, of Phoebe's courage, her selflessness, her way of protecting the children. He had hugged his son close to him, felt the old prick of tears again. He had committed so many crimes, but he had been under a spell, if it could be put that way. His memories had been altered and supplanted with evil. Yet in that altered state there was always in him the imbalance, the lack of equilibrium, the ambivalence of his emotions. At times he wondered if he were two versions of one person.

In a sense that could be excused. He didn't want to be excused.

But Admiral Owen McKenzie Paris, revered and feared in Starfleet, father of Kathryn, Tom Paris and Nick Locarno, had no such excuse.

None at all. It was – if that could be any justification – as if he had been born evil. In was in every bone in his body, in every nerve, every utterance, in every narrow-eyed smile, in every gesture – the man exuded his own brand of cunning. And Tom Paris had to live with such a man. Two other women produced children fathered by him. And Phoebe…

He heard the children's voices coming from the kitchen – bright voices, happy voices, laughter going up. Phoebe's room was near the front of the house, the room that their parents occupied when they were still alive. It was a brilliant move on Phoebe's part. The man had to walk past her room or make a noise if he wanted to be anywhere near the children. The kitchen door had two old fashioned heavy duty surface slide bolts on the inside if Owen tried to enter from the back of the house.

But Phoebe took the brunt of his lust, by the looks of it.

Chakotay stood in the open doorway of her room, watching the sisters connect again.

"There, that should do it," Kathryn comforted, "no more pain." The hypospray made a soft hiss. They both looked up when they heard him.

"Please, come in," Phoebe said, her face still ravaged, stark and unsmiling, but her eyes no longer so unfriendly.

"Has he gone?" Kathryn asked as she looked up at him. Phoebe lay propped against the pillows.

"Yes, but don't ask me where. I told him to watch his vid-com for more news. Probably his office. The man's on his last legs, Kathryn, even if he is  - "

Kathryn gave him a steely look. "Edward Adam Janeway was my father. Don't you forget that."

"Sorry," he said, smiling at how neatly Kathryn negated Owen Paris from her life.

"He'll see your message," Phoebe whispered. "No one was going to believe that you were alive. All we heard was that you were dead and that Voyager…"

"Voyager was destroyed along with her entire crew."

"Yes."

"Phoebe," Kathryn said as she touched her sister's hand, "we're returning to the Badlands in the near future. You're welcome to join us."

He held his breath. Phoebe was quiet for a long time. Her eyes were red, moist from unshed tears. His heart went out to her. It didn't bear thinking what she had been forced to do in order to keep the children from harm. But she too, needed to talk. All her life she had resented Kathryn, had never even been friendly towards him, the one or two occasions he had been in her orbit. She resented Kathryn's happiness too. Her world was filled with darkness and Kathryn's was beginning to fill with light and laughter, so how could Phoebe Janeway not want that for herself and live with the reality that it may never be her right to be happy?

It was this, he believed, that made her such easy prey for Owen Paris, who knew exactly where to pounce, which angry buttons to push on this young woman.

"I am sorry, Kathryn…"

"Phoebe? There's nothing – "

"For hating you so much. I didn't know…"

"You protected the children, Phoebe. For that we will always be indebted to you. He would have killed you outside."

Phoebe smiled sadly.

"I told Ethan to disable his grandfather's phasers. Don't know much about them myself, but Ethan – he's very clever you know, smart just like Tom and Nick – "

"You know about Nick?"

"Yes," she sighed. "Nick tried to help me once. I was...well, too much in Owen's clutches. Nick wanted me to meet his mother. I should have listened to him."

"His mother is a good woman. Just like Tom's mother, like our mother. All were victims of a very ugly man," Kathryn told her.

"He wanted Ethan, you know. Saw the lust in his eyes whenever he looked at your little boy. That was when I knew I couldn't let him near the children."

"Thank you, for saving them."

"They're pretty scared of him, Chakotay. He's no loss to them." she said, sounding bitter.

"But you paid the price…" he said softly.

Phoebe wiped ineffectually at the tears the welled in her eyes again.

"I was stupid, Chakotay. I should have listened to Kathryn. But I was so...angry...  Daddy - "

"He loved you, Phoebe, more than you'll ever know. Only you just never let him love you... He wanted to, so badly."

"I know now," Phoebe said, giving a sob as she threw herself against Kathryn. When she calmed sufficiently again to sit back with a tearful smile on her face, she reached to grasp his arm. "Thank you both. I would very much like to accept your offer. We can find a family to live here..."

"And you can have your own family - "

"You forget, Katie," she said, a look of mischief in her face, "I need a good man for that."

"You will find the right man. Ethan and Lainey will need cousins they can spoil to pieces."

Phoebe burst into tears. It shocked them both, the intensity of her sobbing. Chakotay thought that the relief to be free from Owen Paris must have been so great. Kathryn held her sister again, crooned to her, promised that she'd love her forever, that they would remain together as a family.

But the words that rushed from Phoebe were incoherent stammering;  in their very incoherence  they formed a damning indictment against the man whose downfall Tom Paris and Nick Locarno had planned that morning early.

"You don't know how hard it was to keep him away from the children...especially Ethan. It was so hard..."

"Oh, Phoebe, it's over now, sweetheart. He can't touch us again."

"I knew from the time he took the children from you, that he wanted Ethan. I always knew he wanted little boys. I knew about Tom. Owen...that first time... He raped me, you know..."

Chakotay turned ice-cold at Phoebe's words. Then she looked at them, her eyes tearless this time, the woe replaced by a sheen of bitterness. 

"A little family of my own will have to be shelved, you two."

"Why?"

"I can't have children, Kathryn."

********* 

TBC

 


	28. Chapter 28

* * *

Doctor Maris Locarno studied the two young men before her. It was still very early morning and she had arrived at her suite in Starfleet Medical at 0600.They had arrived not long afterwards and both men looked exhausted, as if they had been working on something throughout the night. They looked like conspirators, so it was quite possible that they pulled an all-nighter. Whatever it was, she was going to know about it by mid-morning. Of that she was dead certain.

Two young men, both dressed in command red.

Nick, her son, who had, until almost a month ago, been an inmate at the New Zealand Penal Colony and who had been freed by Kathryn Janeway for Voyager's mission in the Badlands. The other was Tom Paris, his half brother. Nick had known since he was very young who his father was, but for his own sake she had kept him away from the most vindictive, raw, cold-blooded man she had ever known. Tom, she suspected, had only been informed recently of their connection, and both men were the half brothers of Kathryn Janeway.

She had been overjoyed to learn that Nick had been one of the survivors of Voyager's crash, and felt a natural empathy for all those who died and for their loved ones who remained behind. Tom had not been on Voyager but Kathryn Janeway believed that he could be redeemed. From her own forced liaison with Owen Paris she had been given a son whom she loved with desperation. But Tom Paris had no such luxury. His mother died too young, when he was too young. His father...

Tom and Nick had been instrumental in the confession everyone had heard on the early morning news. She could see it in their faces. Both men, so remarkably alike they could be identical twins had been unable to conceal the guilt which was written all over their faces. Though, to be sure, no one else would have seen it.

But Thomas Eugene Paris had a problem and the problem manifest itself in the way his eyes shifted nervously, the way he bit his lower lip - just like Nick, but Nick wasn't doing it at the moment - and the way his fingers strummed on no particular surface. Just a strumming. He looked bothered, sweaty.

They had come to her to beg her to join them and for her to meet Tom. Tom she thought idly, needed a mother.

"And so, Mom, we would really love for you to join us on our new mission into the Badlands. We need another medical officer..."

It had been a very tempting offer. If Nick were going, she wanted to be where she could be his family.

"Besides, Doctor," Tom had added, "we have a very cute nephew and an adorable niece who could use a real, good grandma..."

Yes, it was tempting. She knew about Kathryn and Chakotay, knew that they had gone to Ketarcha where they remained for a few years after the twins' birth. No one had known, but she had been Kathryn's physician in the early stages of her pregnancy, until Owen Paris threatened them. Then they fled, for the babies' sake.

She smiled to herself. It would be good to tutor two young children who could call her grandma... After all, they were family, weren't they?

And now, Tom.

Nick and Tom had done something, something fantastical to make the entire Federation believe it was really Owen Paris who spoke and whom they saw and heard on their vid-coms. Even those who never watched the news, would have been informed via the fastest grapevine this side of the Alpha Quadrant.

Owen Paris was finished as a man. That was all there was to it.

Was it? She wondered about that. Tom looked strangely disconcerted, to the point that Nick had to steady him.

"Hey, you're not going to chicken out now, are you?"

Tom's hands shook.

"I killed Torres just like that," he muttered.

"You did what you had to do, Tom."

"And Jenny? What about Jenny? Her mother forgave me, did you know? How could she forgive me for killing her daughter?"

"Tom, my brother, you were a different - "

"I am Thomas Eugene Paris, son of a murderer, son of a man of no morals, son of a sick old fart. I'm like him, don't you see?"

Maris stood ready with a hypospray, but Tom brushed her gently away.

"You need to calm down, Tom."

"You don't know, Doctor, what I've done."

Tom's eyes looked red; he wanted to cry. A sob escaped him. Maris nodded to Nick who held Tom while she administered a mild sedative. Tom sagged against her. He sobbed again.

"He doesn't deserve to live, Doctor," he said slowly. "He doesn't deserve to live."

"Good," Nick responded as he gripped Tom's shoulders and shook him slightly. "Just so long as you hold on to that thought. Okay?"

Tom sighed. "Okay."

******************

Owen Paris left Indiana in a hurry. To say he was shocked was putting it mildly. He never skulked. He never showed fear, nor did he ever admit to being wrong , in the wrong, in flight, or off beam. That was the way he lived his life.

He had a lifestyle and like it or not, his colleagues had to deal with that. So did his family.

What family? The fragmented quasi unit of products from illicit affairs, extreme violations against a person? The grandson and granddaughter who always shied away from him and never so much as gave him a smile?

What family? The son by his wife, the son by a rape and daughter by a rape? The sister of that daughter whom he brutally subdued and made her play his games by his rules?

Gone. No more.

Chakotay never once smiled. The man bristled and stood ready to fight him to the death if it had to come to that. Chakotay would never willingly kill him. The Chakotay he created in his laboratory would have had no second thoughts, no third or fourth thoughts of killing him, of driving that d'k tagh through his chest.

No, not even first thoughts. That Chakotay would have cut his throat. Period. No recriminations, no regrets, no compunction, no remorse, no hesitation.

But the new Chakotay, or the one he purged, was the one whose sense of honour always grated. That Chakotay was the one he hated. That Chakotay was the only human person alive or dead to whom he could aspire, if he wanted to aspire to anything as noble as being a man with honour, of principles, of moral codes and ethics by which to live one's life.

That was the Chakotay, the one who stared him down so calmly, so honourably, who reminded him most of what he could have been.

That was why he hated Kathryn's husband so much.

He envied him, resented him, wanted what he had. Almost got what he had.

Paris sighed. It wasn't the end yet for him. At least, he didn't believe that. He could leave Federation space, settle elsewhere where the Law Enforcement hounds wouldn't be able to get him. He could alter his appearance and go around molesting little boys and girl completely unseen.

He could.

But, the news this morning was too damning, the indictment coming ostensibly from him, too self-incriminating and, he was not responsible for the communiqué. Very clever to have taken a previous active recording of him and superimposing whoever sat there in his chair to speak those words, synchronise sound and movement perfectly. He would be the only one who would know it was a set-up.

Damn fools! He wouldn't put it past Tom to have done this. The kid had grown into a man, and he was delivering on his promise to bring down his own father. But Tom had to have help. He got here the same way Kathryn and Chakotay got back to Earth. They must have conspired against him.

But he was going to show them. Just as soon as he convinced the police he was innocent.

Turn on your vid-com while you're airborne…

He'd almost forgotten the Warrior's words.

The news flashed instantly, and he caught the words…

"…that there were in fact survivors of the Voyager crash. One of the survivors was Captain Kathryn Janeway. Also among those who survived were the CMO of Voyager, Doctor Krell, the Chief of Security, Lieutenant-Commander Tuvok, the pilot Nicholas Locarno…"

"Nicholas…and Tom together…" Owen Paris croaked, for the first time really troubled by the news. "There is no way to run…"

"It has also been confirmed by none other than Captain Chakotay himself, that he is alive and well, his memories which had been viciously purged by Admiral Owen Paris, restored. This had been one of the many transgressions Admiral Paris had committed and to which he has confessed in an earlier communiqué."

"Oh, no…"

"All survivors have been in contact with their families – "

"But not Tom…"

"Starfleet command has issued a formal pardon to Thomas Eugene Paris as well as Captain Chakotay. It is indeed with great sadness that we acknowledge the confession of Admiral Owen McKenzie Paris who has been a member of one of the most influential and stalwart families in Starfleet…"

Just then, another beep overrode the current communiqué and when he switched channel for a direct communication, it was to stare into the face of Admiral Hays.

"Admiral Hays, what can I do for you?" he asked, giving Hays his best smile.

But Hays didn't return the smile. He remained stern, his face unsympathetic. The formerly quasi-friendly face that smiled at conventions, social functions, meetings, was gone. The sudden realisation struck him – he had never been invited to private parties, house warming, office conclaves…

"Owen, it would be in your best interest of you remained in your office this morning. Two officers will be there shortly to fit you with a security anklet. No off-world travel. Be warned: should your shuttle leave orbit, we will not hesitate to fire at you."

So that was it.

He was a murderer.

Traitor to the Federation.

Plotted to assassinate the President of the Federation.

Plotted to destroy the planet Vulcan and all its inhabitants.

Raped the mind of Captain Chakotay of his life memories and turned him into a killing machine.

Destroyed Voyager in the Badlands. All proof of the destruction of the vessel had been furnished by Captain Chakotay to Starfleet Command.

Refused intervention in the suicide of his wife Elizabeth Paris and daughter Rowena.

Raped Gretchen Janeway.

Raped Maris Locarno.

Raped Phoebe Janeway.

Known to have poisoned Gretchen Janeway.

Molested little boys and girls.

Molested his son, Thomas Eugene Paris.

 

What Hays could have added and probably thought: "You're a sick fuck, Owen Paris."

If he could cry, he would. But his eyes were dry as he switched off the vid-com just before he touched down at Headquarters and made his way to his office.

Today it seemed to be quieter than usual as he walked across the lawns to his office. There weren't many people about. Strangely quiet, too. There was a sense of doom about the emptiness of the building. It was only 0800 hours. Most aides were on duty by now even if their bosses only arrived an hour later. Security anklet, indeed! What, did they think he was crazy? And admiral held for questioning?

He was innocent! He didn't send out that communiqué.

His face, his mouth, his words – every damning one of them.

Jail. New Zealand Penal Colony.

He sent Mark Johnson there once. Nick was there. They turned old men like Owen Paris into women. They would rape him day and night, and at night he would become someone's woman, made to beg for a fuck.

They sent criminals there.

It was the only place to go. New Zealand was hell. But then, the old Cardassian Frontline Prison Colony was the worst.

They would send him there. There was no way he could argue himself out of the charges.

No way at all. He was an old man, too old for this sort of thing. Chakotay should have killed him, but Chakotay was too much of the warrior to do that.

"Besides," as Tommy would have said, "who would want to do a sick old man that favour?"

They would turn him into the fool of Starfleet, the man with 'sin' written on his forehead. He would be the subject of tavern talk, casual conclaves about how a man from an illustrious family destroyed his family name and brought dishonour to the name Paris. He would never be smiled upon. The one or two acquaintances he had would stand and point to him, telling their friends, "Look, there goes a man, but he was a dirty old man playing sick little games with kids." They would turn away from him and warn others loudly so that he could hear them, to keep away from Owen Paris.

At least, before yesterday they feared him too much to say things to his face.

Now he was to be avoided.

It was unbearable.

I am alone...

Maybe Josh Grey was on duty already, Owen thought as he walked down the corridor of the second floor to his office.

Then again, maybe not.

They had to have been here since the communiqué came from this location. He still couldn't be sure whether it was Tom or Nick or both.

He opened the door.

His eyes instantly fell on the glass on his desk - aloof, yet inviting. Even in his fear-filled mind, he noted that its stem rested gracefully on a dark blue circular coaster bearing the garland of the Federation insignia.

************************

FINALE TO FOLLOW


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finale.

* * *

The symbolism of the glass and its contents was just as instantaneous. The glass gleamed, silvery sparks shooting off its smooth surface. Under normal circumstances, the scene would have been the setting for an evening with a woman or boy, with calm precision enjoying the prospect of the hunt, the thrill of the kill, the sated feeling of the aftermath. The room or the office would be bathed in a semi-gloom just as it was now  with no natural light stealing its way through open windows.

The glass was shaped like a delta, or inverted triangle, the stem spiralled downwards to rest on a base which in turn, covered the coaster.

The contents of the glass filled him with dread and meaning. He had seen this glass all his life, had loved to drink martinis from it. Now, a clear, pinkish liquid filled it. A liquid he knew all too well.

_Apiaceae Conium maculatum_

 

poison hemlock

 

All parts of the plant lethal, most notably the seeds. A cocktail of all parts distilled into a drink, even more lethal It can kill within minutes. Causes paralysis, allowing the body little movement while the brain functions, making the subject fully aware of how the poison breaks down the body. Added with a viral component, causes haemorrhage whereby all internal organs begin to melt while the brain remains resistant to the effect until the body collapses.

All the time you are aware that you are dying.

 

He killed Gretchen Janeway with poison hemlock. He coerced his wife and daughter to drink it, in order to leave his son behind.

His own son.

Thomas Eugene Paris.

"One day I will come back and haunt you. Mark my words..."

But Tom was nowhere. Had never announced his return. Yet, he sensed that Tom must have had a hand in this, same way he had a hand in his father's grand confession before the entire Alpha Quadrant. Yes, Tom had something to do with this. He was the only one who could concoct a synthetic version of a hemlock cocktail, taught by his father many, many years ago.

"One day, son, you're going to kill Kathryn Janeway, that bitch in heat, with this. It's easy to do, son. Just watch me..."

Why was it he thought so belatedly about Tom's reaction at the time when Tom said "Just like Mama died, Daddy?

"No, son, Mama was not a bitch in heat. She was just a bitch."

Too late. Too late!

The hatred had never gone. It lay waiting like a beast in the darkness, hibernating all through his young life until now, ready to emerge in all its cruelty. This was Tom's work, as surely as he was Owen Paris, standing in front of his desk, looking at the glass of poison, seeing it reaching invitingly for him.

Once Tom had called him a coward. The drink beckoned, told him to make like a coward and use that way out of his mess. For that was what he was in now.

It is over.

Thus said Chakotay.

It is over, Owen.

Thus said Kathryn.

This is it, grandpa.

Thus chorus Ethan and Lainey.

Take it, Dad. Take it like the coward you are.

Thus said Thomas Eugene Paris.

"Owen, it is in your interest to go to your office and remain there..."

Hays,  Nechayev, Gordon, Ponsonby, Krog, Ru'al, Berenski.

This is your life, Owen McKenzie Paris, admiral, husband, father, grandfather. Cast your eyes on the images that will be the life you witnessed, and that will be the testimony of your life.

Did you not know that a man who takes a woman to his heart shows through his daily life what those outside must see and admire?

Take your seat, for we are coming, Owen McKenzie Paris: admiral, husband, father, grandfather.

Too stunned to speak, he sat down in his chair – his home for more than twenty years.

The place of his prurience; the  place where all battles were fought, all plots were planned, lust was lurking,  all manner of devices given birth to in a brain where chaos reigned and chaos continued to hold sway.

Too stunned to speak, he could only look with eyes that bulged at the glass in front of him – the delta shaped goblet that continued in a thin, spiral stem down to a wide brim for purchase against the Federation.

The liquid appeared cool, a transparent pink, an olive perched sideways against the rim on a tiny toothpick. Strangely, a sprig from the plant garnished the liquid, remained fresh as it hovered like a small craft on the sea of sin.

Too stunned to speak, he saw in his mind's eye the day he had placed such a drink on the table for Elizabeth, ordering her to partake of his evil potion, ordering her to die.

Ordering his little daughter to die.

Too stunned to speak, he saw in his mind's eye the little boy, hysterical with grief, unable to give his voice to his outrage. Just wordless, open-mouthed sobbing as he watched his mother die.

Too stunned to speak, he looked up at the two men who entered his office, carrying with them equipment only he recognised. They approached him silently, and just as silently, bade he remain in his chair with the high back and broad armrests. Silently, they signalled that he place his arms on the armrests. He complied, his eyes dead on the delta with its pink liquid and spiked green olive perched at an angle. Somehow in its stark aloofness he had time to admire the beauty of the martini. And, while admiring the dangerous delta, the men braced his arms, fixing them so that even in the throes of hell's highway, he could not free himself.

Too stunned to speak, he felt the coldness of the electrodes as they were latched to his temples, his forehead, the dip behind the ears, the base of the skull, the soft whirring as the machines were activated.

Breathe not too deeply, Owen McKenzie Paris, admiral, husband, father, grandfather.

In silence the men beckoned he look at his screen – enhanced, enlarged so that al images appeared life-like.

Breathe not, Owen McKenzie Paris, as you look at the first images.

Breathe not, for you are the child of five, and your perpetrator the high school boy who violated you, who tested his own reflexes, who wanted to see if having sex with boys would suit him.

You are that little boy. Feel his pain, feel his bewilderment, feel his fear. Watch how the rapist approaches him. Scream his fear, scream.

You are the victim Gretchen Janeway. Look through her eyes at Owen Paris. See his eyes, full of lust and evil and violence. Scream her fear, protest, yes. Feel her pain, her pain, her pain! It is unbearable! Cry in your heart, Gretchen, for the child he left there.

Cry in your heart.

Through your eyes, through your heart, in your ears and your emotions you are Elizabeth Paris and you are your little girl Rowena.

See, look on your screen, Owen McKenzie Paris, and become Rowena, your little daughter. Feel her sorrow, her pain, her perplexity as her daddy closes in on her and makes her drink of the poison you prepared. Feel the liquid burning as it enters your body, feel your eyes bulging, your small mouth beginning to froth and you look at your daddy and in wordless pain you ask, "Why, Daddy?"

Through the eyes of your victims you see your crimes.

No longer are you Owen McKenzie Paris, admiral, husband, father, grandfather.

You are Thomas Eugene Paris. You feel the fear of your Daddy and you scream "Why, Daddy?"

You lie in bed, your room filled with only the light of the moon, the moon that rages with you and cries with you and spills your sorrow over the silvery lake outside every bedroom of every other little boy who comes to know your sorrow. There is no solace. Yesterday, before your very eyes, your mother drank the poison from the delta he put there for her.

Your door opens and the shadow enters, moving towards your bed. You tremble in your fear, your despair is nameless beyond any boundary you will ever know.

You do not have the strength to say, "No, Daddy…please, don't…"

Feel your father's body as it bears down on you.

Weep. Weep. Weep.

And so we give you the woman's body, for you are  Gretchen, you are Phoebe, you are Maris. Try to fight an overpowering force and feel your helpless rage as his body bears down on yours.

Weep. Weep. Weep.

You are Vulcan. You are Voyager. You are every crewman you sent to his or her death.

A hundred voices pour their grief into the numbing, nameless nebulas and distant stars and plasma turbulence. Hear the thousand voices of all those touched by the cruel vile, evil man who dishonoured his name and his Federation. Hear them forever screaming into the furthest corners of your brain.

Forever.

And so Owen McKenzie Paris's eyes were glued to the enhanced screen where he became everyone he murdered, everyone he raped, every child he threatened. His heart thudded, boiled, filled with fear, a fear that was sealed in, with no hope of escaping.

Then came the tears. They would not stop, because he was no longer Owen McKenzie Paris, admiral, husband, father, grandfather.

More images as the tears spilled down his cheeks.

Chakotay and Kathryn, arm in arm, and on each side of them their children, Ethan holding his mother's hand and Lainey holding her daddy's hand. They walked towards him, smiling, laughing together, their faces relaxed, happy in their unity. The children clung to their parents, and then they released their hands and came together, hugging  - Ethan and Lainey.

They waved at him. All of them. Kathryn, Chakotay, Lainey and Ethan. Away into the new sunrise or new sunsets – whatever the destination, there was always the sun that warmed them with their healing rays.

Yes, they walked away from him, waving.

Only Ethan and Lainey cried together "Bye-bye, Owen Paris!"

Too stunned to speak, he tried to reach for the delta glass. Restrained against his chair, the glass on its coaster of the Federation seemed to move just out of his reach.

Next he saw his son Thomas, waving to him. Thomas smiled, his face free of the sin of his father. He joined Kathryn, Chakotay and the children, moving further and further into the distant sun.

He tried to call Thomas back, but Thomas moved away, waved without looking behind him.

And then came all those spectres from his life.

Elizabeth and Rowena, spirits who taunted him with the joy in their new havens, where only joy resided and where he could never, never, never touch them again.

Gretchen Janeway, innocent, dead, spirit.

The one hundred and forty spectres floating from the debris of Voyager, towards him, then maddeningly, away from him where they too, joined the others into the distant golden sun.

Yet, through it all, he knew fear. Cold, unabridged fear that ate from his loins, into every sinew, every nerve, every bone, every hair on his body – it quivered.

For now he could no longer banish those images because they were not only images from his crimes, but they were him.

He tried to scream and couldn't. He tried to tell them the pain is too much, but he couldn't. He tried to show them that the guilt and remorse is eating away at his insides.

As if they could divine those thoughts, they removed the restraints from his hands. Yet, as he reached for the delta poison, it moved away from his greedy hands.

Not for him the easy way out. Not for him the way to redemption. Not for him, pardon.

The men helped him to stand up. Drunk from the pain, they removed the electrodes one by one. He couldn't speak, for his tongue had grown thick. He looked at the poison with longing, tried to reach for it again, but his body had been paralysed by the procedure of integrating into his memories the trauma of every man, woman and child he raped, pained, purged, injured, killed.

The door opened and two more figures appeared. They wore white coats and carried instruments with them. He tried to cry out, tried to move away from hands that removed his uniform, the rank insignia, his shodding, his undergarments. He tried to move away, but could not.

The first stab of pain shot through his traumatised brain as the knife cut sharply into flesh, excised from his body such evil as had started when he was a fifteen year old boy. He tried to scream, but no sound came from him.

He knew only nameless fear as blood trickled away from his body, then the expunged area cauterised. He stared with dumb, numb, unbelieving eyes down, saw nothing that was once the pride of a man.

The white clad figures dressed him again. Uniform, rank insignia. They brushed his hair into smoothness, created again the smart, upstanding citizen of the Federation.

Admiral Owen McKenzie Paris, now imbued with the holocaust of his victims.

Admiral Owen McKenzie Paris, once a husband, father, grandfather.

His tongue remained a thickened blob in his mouth. They cared not how he would eat, or drink, or pass water.

They led him away, a security anklet sealing his incarceration in a glass booth.

Let it be known that Admiral Paris committed these dreadful crimes. Switch on the panel and the list of his iniquities appear on the walls of glass surrounding him. On the plazas of Earth's great cities where all who would view the deranged man in the booth would witness his fear.

For let it be known that the integration of his victims' terror would activate once in every five hours for a full hour. Let it be known that the man in the glass booth who wails in pain, screams and pleads for desperate release, experiences in those hours his fear in the precise way as if he were those he maimed, murdered, raped.

He cannot speak, so they will not know that he pleads for release from the terror in his head. They will think him deranged. Curious individuals will mark the time and arrive just when he begins to scream when he sees whom they cannot see…

 

His son, cowering in fear.

His grandchildren, paralysed with terror.

His wife in the throes of death, breathing her last.

Gretchen Janeway in the throes of death, breathing her last.

Phoebe Janeway, raped.

Maris Locarno, raped.

Captain Chakotay, honoured and decorated  warrior, the aggressive purging of his memories.

The screams of the crew of Voyager, in the final throes of death.

 

They will see how he tries to drink the delta poison which will always, always remain tantalisingly outside his reach.

 

******************

 

THE END

 

 

 Thanks to everyone!

 


End file.
